Livie Claassen and Adriana Duerksen from Goessel High School, competed in the National Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) Leadership Conference in San Diego, California this summer. Their STAR event, Focus on Children, gave them opportunities to help elementary students learn the important skill of goal-setting. After competing at the district and state level, they advanced to the national level with their project. They not only brought home gold medals but also earned an extra plaque for scoring second in the nation.
The two friends, now sophomores in the 2022/2023 school year, decided to compete together rather than do individual events.
“We wanted to do it together because it’s scary to do it by ourselves as freshmen,” said Duerksen.
They competed locally and then placed well at districts earning a spot at state. They added to the presentation and did well again and were able to go on to the national competition held in San Diego at the end of June where they attended the conference and got to do some sight seeing.
Duerksen felt like they were so successful due to choosing to work with kids because “that is one of the hardest topics,” she said.
Claassen added “I would say when we went over the ruberic, we made sure everything fit perfectly and when we met with the kids, we made sure to have tons of activities and we made sure to go three different times. Also every time we went we were up and moving and did different things which helped the kids really buy into it.
Duerksen said memorizing their presentation helped them do well, too.
“We wanted to memorize it in order to stand out. We thought everyone would have it memorized but we were the only group without notecards and it helped us stand out,” said Claassen. “It was a very big undertaking for freshmen, but with us just practicing, it made it a really neat experience for us.”
Duerksen’s mom Janna added an extra fun piece of information to make it all more special. Each girl took their moms and grandmas along with them on the trip and all had been involved in FCCLA at some point in their lives so they got to enjoy it all together.
Both girls plan to participate again next year but plan to each do their own presentations this time in order to challenge themselves a bit more. Stay tuned to see how they do.
Two Goessel students take 2nd at FCCLA Nationals
