His heart pounded in his chest, friends nudged him, mouthing the two words that caused him to panic, “Do it.”
Junior auto tech student Jay Jenkins grimaced as he remembered what happened that September day. He slowly started to stand and looked out at the sea of eyes that surrounded him. An adult stood and walked over to Jenkins, making him catch his breath. Then it happened…hundreds of people began to…sing “Happy Birthday”.
Jenkins smirked as he remembered, “During the closing ceremony I got tricked into standing in front of over 350 students.”
Jenkins was part of a SkillsUSA group from SHS which attended a leadership conference in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 17-Sept. 21. Jenkins’s birthday fell on the 19th during the trip.
“It was awesome,” Jenkins said. “It couldn’t have been better having my birthday in Washington, D.C.”
Battling “intense rain”, “rude people”, and what SkillsUSA students described as a “numerous amount of hobos” on District of Columbia streets, the delegation spent the week sight seeing and working with others from all over the nation on leadership business.
“It was a lot of hard work,” career prep senior Kristen Alvarado said. “Some people think it’s all fun and games, but we were busy from 8 a.m. to about 11 at night.”
The delegation listened to various speakers, participated in ice breaker sessions, split into color-coded groups meeting people from all over the United States.
“We talked about the Perkins Act, how to fund raise in our community, how to be a good leader, and what needs to change in our schools,” Jenkins said.
The group visited landmarks around the Washington area like the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the White House and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
“The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was awesome because even though you had to be quiet, you wanted to be quiet to show respect,” career prep senior Cera Castillo said. “A random soldier was fighting for our nation.”
The delegation also visited the Holocaust Museum.
“They had videos and actual pictures of the actual events they went through,” Alvarado said. “You weren’t the same person coming out as you were going in.”
They also saw the statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. commemorating the March on Washington.
“You could see where all of those people stood when he gave that good speech,” auto tech junior AJ Froese said.
The group rode subway trains to and from events. They were scheduled to see a Washington Nationals game, but it was rained out, but that meant they got to see two double-header play-off games the next day.
According to sponsor Jana Fleming, the baseball games were great, but they had to leave to make the train and the Nationals were behind 6-0.
“We were packed like sardines on the train,” Fleming said. “We heard that the Nationals came back to 6-4 in the same inning we left and then it was 6-5. Everyone on the train was going crazy. The Nationals ended up losing, but it was cool.”
As the trip came to an end, the members had a new perspective of the historic Washington sites they had seen in books and on television.
“Just getting to see all that [Americans] have achieved and overcome these past years,” cosmetology junior Annie Klassen said. “It’s really cool to see that everything is still standing.”