By Izhaan Ahmed
This past March, NHP students from the school district’s CTE programs attended the SkillsUSA competition and achieved great results.
The Career and Technical Education classes offered to students throughout the district, known collectively as CTE, are a series of opportunities intended for students to have an experience with any given set of vocations, with courses ranging from a three-year class in pre-engineering to a two-year culinary arts course. These courses are offered at Sewanhaka High School, requiring students to transport between schools by bus, and often have a diverse makeup of students from all five high schools that constitute the Sewanhaka school district.
SkillsUSA has a similar mission in furthering the education of high school students in many workforce skills, materializing at NHP in the form of extracurricular activities and competitions in regional, state and national levels.
This year, on March 21, NHP students supported the Sewanhaka district team competitors in the SkillsUSA Area VI Regional competition at Suffolk Community College. Several members of this team conquered the trials of the competitions, earning medals in subjects such as “Prepared Speech” and “Action Skills Basic.”
Source from sewanhaka_cte Instagram
Seniors Nicholas Washington (top row, second from left) & David Ren (top row, right) pose with their medals for winning the "Quiz Bowl" along with the rest of the Sewanhaka CTE team.
Senior David Ren reflected on the event “Quiz Bowl,” and the gold medal he and his team earned.
“The event was composed of 50 questions with six teams around buzzers. Whichever team hit the buzzer first would get to answer, and a point would be awarded to every correct answer and deducted for every incorrect answer. We won first place with around 10 points to second place's 5. Technically, we weren't supposed to know that we won until the awards ceremony, but we were keeping tally during the event so we knew. We were all super happy that we won except a little bit annoyed that we wouldn't be able to go to states with the lack of funding.”
Senior Nicholas Washington was also part of the winning team for “Quiz Bowl.”
“In previous years, I had done a skills presentation where I had to explain a skill gained from my time in my CTE class. Personally, for that competition, I had found it relatively fun cause I do find presenting enjoyable, but that was limited due to the solo nature of the competition. This year, however, being in the ‘Quiz Bowl’ Trivia, we as a team, had decided to study and master different sections of what we needed to know. My portion covered the general inner workings and symbolism of SkillsUSA, what different parts of the logo mean, the SkillsUSA oath; that sorta thing. Others covered things like general knowledge, pop culture and recent history. I think that the general vibe was quite a bit more laid back because of the team setup which allowed us to blow the other teams out of the water.”
Source from sewanhaka_cte Instagram
All of Sewanhaka's CTE teams from culinary to pre-engineering come together for a photo in front of the competition doors.
Senior Joey Hoffer, another SkillsUSA competitor, honed his culinary skills in anticipation for the event.
“I prepared for this event by practicing everyday leading up to the competition in my culinary class. We practiced the same thing over and over again, and I felt prepared prior to the event. I feel like I performed decently even though I didn’t win. It wasn’t ideal since we had to cook in the school gym with all the other competitions going on, but it was an overall fun experience. It was cool competing against and seeing so many talented kids, and I enjoyed the trip instead of going to school.”