FCCLA Students Earn Medals at Nationals

Students from Granville High School and Middle School competed at the Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) National Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., in July with 7,500 other participants.

Debby Beighley won a gold award for her Teach and Train project. Debby’s multi-faceted project focused on teaching healthy eating. Debby coordinated with Jim Reding at the GHS garden and, using produce from the garden, she conducted a taste-testing for Girls Scout troops and students from the YES Club (Youth Engaged in Service) in Newark. Debby also did a taste testing of a beet smoothie to many supporters at the OSU Melanoma Football Fund Raising Event at the GHS football stadium. In addition, Debby’s veggie and dip taste testing for second graders at GES was well received.

Isabella Yeager’s wide-reaching project in the Chapter Service Portfolio area received a silver award. Partnering with Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Ronald McDonald house in Columbus, she focused on making children and their parents more comfortable. GMS and GHS FCCLA students and community members made 202 pillowcases for patients at Children’s Hospital and included an encouraging letter from a FCCLA student. They also collected pop tabs, which the Ronald McDonald house exchanges to buy supplies for the parents who stay while their children are hospitalized. Isabella’s project also included gathering hotel-size toiletries for parents to use during their stay.

Alexandra Mazik and Rowan Yeager from GMS received a silver medal for their Chapter Service Display project on the Fuel Up to Play 60 grant that increased physical exercise at GMS and provided nutrition education on breakfast and food demonstrations. Grant money was also used to purchase a smoothie machine for middle and high school students to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables.

Sydney Mazik attended the conference as a representative from the middle school and assisted with judging the Environmental Ambassador STAR event projects. She also attended leadership training sessions.

“Working on and presenting these projects at the local, state and national levels is such a great experience for the students,” GHS Family and Consumer Sciences teacher and FCCLA advisor Cindy Shaffer said. “There are many valuable life-long employability skills learned by creating, coordinating and presenting their projects.”

Barb Blatter, FCS teacher and FCCLA advisor from GMS, added, “Students in FCCLA learn they can make a difference in their school and community by improving nutritional intake and food supply, fighting community hunger, helping deployed U.S. servicemen and working with agencies like the Licking County Coalition for Housing.”

The leadership training sessions at the conference focused on helping teens develop skills in public speaking, group dynamics and collaboration, effective communications and networking, the role of responsible leaders, project management, critical thinking and problem solving, decision-making and risk-taking, making a difference in the community, and vision and revision of the student-led local organizations.

FCCLA is the student-led organization that corresponds to the Family and Consumer Sciences classes offered at GMS and GHS.

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