Gold Medal Winner in Cosmetology

I am a Skills USA advisor. For those of you who don't know what Skills USA is, it's a nationwide organization for vocational students to compete in employability skills and their trade areas for medals, scholarships, prizes, and fun. Our school is a total participation school. This means that every student in our school is a member. This organization has many events throughout the school year that include local, district, state, and national competitions. All of which the advisors prepare for. It starts in the Fall with a three day leadership conference. Each school designates students to be the officers that represent their school. The categories are President, Vice-president, Secretary, Treasurer, Historian, and Parlimentarian. We chose seven students. So, we added our own category of Fund-raiser coordinator. At the leadship conference, the chosen students learn leadership and employability skills development activities and programs. Also, they do a community service project. Throughout the Winter, we planned fundraisers and raised money for the Doug Flutie, Jr. Foundation for Autism. We had a Spaghetti dinner, a bottle and can drive, and hat day where students paid one-dollar to wear their hats in school for the day. The raised funds were due in April when we went to the District competition. This competition involved students taking the written exams within their trade area, safety, and Skills USA knowledge. One of our Cosmetology students won the gold medal for the over-500 Cosmetology competition. Our school won a total of two gold medals and a bronze at the west district competition. These students went on to compete in the three-day state competition on May 1-3. We ended up with two bronze medals at that competition in Basic Health Care and Advertising Design. We are so proud of all the hard work our students did, and I was so excited that one of our Cosmetology students won a medal!

Hair Pressing Demonstration

Today, I did a demonstration on Hair Pressing. It's kind of an old-fashioned, yet still very popular, technique of temporarily straightening and smoothing very course, curly hair. There are many types of pressing combs that are used for this process. Some are long for long hair and short for short hair. Some have wider teeth, while others have very close teeth for a smoother result. Some combs are electric with a built-in thermostat and some are heated in an electric Marcel-type of heating unit that looks similar to a tiny oven. Today, we used both types and each student practiced sections of a manikin head. They were excited to try it, but also nervous because the irons got so hot. We used the thermostat iron set at 400-degrees. The unregulated iron needed to be tested each time using a piece of light paper. If the paper turned brown, then the comb would burn the hair. There was alot of brown paper, but I'm proud to say there was no burned hair, or skin (thank goodness). We were very careful and followed safety rules and procedures. This was a fun lesson and the students had a fun day.