Sophomore Karlie Phillips heard that the class that got her into the club she loves was going to become just another elective when picking out a project to do for Family, Career and Community Leaders of America, or FCCLA. This is a national organization based on Family and Consumer Sciences where students compete in competitions to display their comprehension towards different parts of FACS.
“You can do a presentation, you can take tests that test your knowledge on things like food and nutrition or child development. There’s financial literacy events to teach about money,” Phillips said. “So it’s basically just doing little events to show your knowledge.”
Family and Consumer Science, also known as FACS classes, started out for sophomores Karli Phillips and Yareli Treto school years as a mandatory elective class. It is a class that teaches life skills including sewing, cooking, and family structures. Treto joined the advocacy project for FCCLA because she feels it surrounds you with good people.
“All the teachers I’ve had, they’re so extra and they’re so loving of all their students, and it’s such an incredible environment,” Treto said. “We want everyone to experience it.”
They started surveying students within the school who have taken the FACS class and some joined the club after taking the class to see what the reaction would be to implementing the classes for middle school students.
“We’ve been getting a lot of data from high schoolers to see if this could definitely help middle schoolers, because it’s helped me a lot to learn life skills. So I think having middle schoolers learn it would be really beneficial too,” Phillips said.
Phillips brought the project to FCCLA sponsor Mrs. Bunch as an Advocacy Star Event for the club’s competition. During the research done by both Phillips and Treto, they learned about the agriculture classes that have been newly added to the middle schools.
“We didn’t realize that until they started this project. And so there are some little agriculture type classes, building trades that are being offered in our middle schools,” Bunch said. “So if those classes can do it, why can these classes?”