Taking students to the state conference was somewhat of a
different experience for me this year. Although I have taken students in the
past, it had always been at the most 4 girls and sometimes even less. This year
8 girls and 1 guy attended from Sierra. It was a great experience for both the
students and me.
My students became enthused about going to this conference
after attending a day long seminar at Johnson and Wales
earlier in the year. Many of my students come from lower socio-economic
families and have not done much traveling. For some of them, this was their
first time going to Denver! And it
was their first time seeing a college campus outside of our local choices. So,
with the exposure to seeing other high school students involved in Family and
Consumer Science classes type issues, they became excited that they could get
to attend the 3 day conference.
Of course the biggest issue was how to pay for it all. I
told them if they were willing to do the fund raising involved, we could go. So
fundraising is what we did for most of the winter into spring! All the students
who attended were in my Catering classes so the obvious way to raise money was
through food. Sierra students and faculty were both the beneficiaries and the
ones who funded our trip. Bake sales, teacher dinners and holiday sales kept us
very busy, but eventually the money needed was raised.
There was much excitement leading up to the conference as
none of my students had ever attended any type of conference. Most had never
stayed at a large hotel! There were many questions and issues to be addressed,
but all went smoothly and we arrived in Denver.
Without going into too much detail, my students had a great
experience. Many of the experiences were eye-opening for some of them,
beginning with the large nice hotel and nice rooms to having the hundreds of
students walking around. Attending the first evenings gathering to dancing on
Friday night they were constantly learning about new things they had never been
exposed to before.
Though the FCCLA conference fulfills a variety of needs for
students from many schools through out Colorado,
from competitions to developing leadership skills, for my students attending
this year’s conference may have had a little different meaning. I feel they
learned that they can now look for opportunities that are available to them, do
what it takes to get to there (fundraising), and then take advantage of what
that experience has to offer.
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