Skills USA Volunteering

For our final volunteer activity we volunteered with Skills USA on Saturday, April 29 at Germanna Community College. Skills USA is a partnership of students, teachers and professionals that improves the American skilled workforce by through a structured program of citizenship, leadership, employability, technical and professional skills training.

When I first arrived, I knew I would be judging a competition, but I really had no idea what to expect. The five of us were split into three groups and Mike and I were tasked with judging the skills competition. We judged twelve student presentations on seven different categories that included opening, speech, organization, effectiveness, skills, conclusion as well as several other categories. We were given a packet of information before the presentations started which included the instructions for grading, what was expected of the students, and scorecards. After reading the instructions for grading, I still felt as though I needed more of an explanation about how we were expected to grade the students and what constituted each grade. There were also three categories at the bottom of the scorecard for timing, attire and safety. Each of the students were given 3 minutes for setup, 6 minutes for their presentation and 3 minutes for clean-up. Students were also expected to dress in the official blazer or sweater with a white collard shirt, black slacks or knee length skirt or attire appropriate for their profession, such as an apron for a chef.

I found that I learned how to grade the students as the presentations progressed along and as I saw more students. We saw and judged a variety of student skills, from police officers, chefs, hair styling, computer assembly and computer programming. I felt that the students knew the "how" of their skills very well but the trouble was in communicating the "why". Almost all of the presentations opened with a strong introduction, faded somewhat during the presentation and concluded too softly. Additionally, I think the students would have also benefited from a criteria worksheet that explained exactly what they would be graded on. More than half of the students were not wearing official clothing that was required by the organization.

While I did note some areas for potential improvement, I think the true take-away from this volunteering event was that these students were tremendously brave and determined. None of the students walked in with a parent or advisor and they all knew their skill to a tee. I think the point of this organization is to get students familiar with getting up in front of peers and panels and get them used to speaking in public about something they know very well. This is a skill that is often lacking in the millennial generation and the more familiar students become with this skill the more confident they will be in the workplace and also in life.
After our volunteering, Delicious Leadership moseyed over to Red Robin to grab a bite to eat, we were all famished and were glad to take in the laughs, reflect on volunteering, discuss our looming blog presentation, laugh and decompress among friends.