Five Oglethorpe County High School students will head to Seattle next month to compete in the Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) national championship.
Johanna Castellanos and Marlene Bahena won gold at the state championship and Grace Foland, Miley Christian and Ellen Hgay were second in their category to earn the trip from June 29-July 3.
Emily Williams, OCHS food science teacher and FCCLA advisor, is proud of her students. She said the skills that are taught are not only important for their education, but also for their personal lives.
“The competition is really important and the lessons they learned from it are also important, but I think just seeing how far they can push themselves is as important,” Williams said.
FCCLA is a nonprofit organization for students who are interested in family and consumer sciences. The organization covers subjects such as hospitality and tourism, visual arts and design, education and training and human services.
Foland, Christian and Hgay, who are sophomores, finished with a silver medal for fashion design at the state level.
Their project, “Fashion Forward,” involved designing four professional dress outfits based on certain guidelines and rubrics. The girls presented their work and modeled an outfit for the judges.
“Sewing is hard. That’s one thing for sure,” Miley said.
Castellanos, a senior, and Bahena, a sophomore, won gold for repurpose and redesign at the state level. The duo's project, JM Bags, involved the use of plastic grocery bags to create purses.
The girls joined the group to be with their friends, but now find themselves prepared to travel across the country to compete against thousands of other students.
The students are thankful the organization has taught them skills and provided them with real-life experience that they can apply to their careers.
Bahena was able to use the marketing and entrepreneurship skills she learned from FCCLA to put toward her goals.
“I want to run my own business,” she said.
The students will make edits to their projects the next month to present the best versions of them at the competition. They will also work on their confidence in public speaking.
“I think the big value is not necessarily the skills, just like working as a team and learning how to talk in front of others and present professional skills that are a big takeaway from these,” Williams said.