McFadden’s projects help students be work ready

Sometimes teachers don’t get a summer vacation. Just ask Shonda McFadden, the FCCLA instructor at Houston County High.

McFadden spent the month working with her Family, Career and Community Leaders of America students at the 2016 National Leadership Conference held in San Diego.

At the conference she was recognized as a master adviser who has been successful in leading an FCCLA chapter for at least three years. These advisers promote the organization, operate an integrated chapter with a balanced program of work, and facilitate youth-centered activities while keeping abreast of the issues in their field.

McFadden was also named a National Executive Council Adviser (NECA) for the group. She is one of 10 national advisers who will support a national officer during the 2016-17 school year. She will be the national adviser to her son Dedan McFadden, who was elected FCCLA national vice president of programs.

The NECA will help their officers guide FCCLA members, who consist of young men and women enrolled in Family and Consumer Sciences programs. They will represent the organization at national and state conferences and other public events.

Without capable adult leaders, students could not take advantage of the many opportunities offered through FCCLA. Being an effective adviser takes special skills and a tremendous commitment of time and energy. Exceptional advisers motivate their chapters to take advantage of opportunities beyond the local level, use a wide variety of resources available to them, and encourage student involvement.

McFadden teaches the early childhood education pathway and serves as Little Bears Preschool director at Houston County High.

She said programs that promote community service and build leadership skills help students in being work ready when that time comes.

“It all starts with building relationships with the students. Students don’t sometimes see within themselves the leaders they can be as well as the teacher can,” McFadden said. “Just encouraging them and starting out with small projects in class to help build up their self-confidence.”

The school has a working pre-school, she said, and she keeps her students busy with many projects.

“These things work because we make sure we have a non-threatening environment,” she said. “Everybody has a different skill level, a different creativity level. I try to teach the kids to be really welcoming and attentive and to listen to everybody because they’re not all going to have the same ideas.”

The non-threatening environment is the key, she said.

“It’s very important, so students are not going to be afraid that somebody’s going to laugh at them when they make a presentation,” she said. “I tell my students a presentation may have some funny parts but don’t laugh at the non-funny parts.”

Another aspect that proves helpful to students is positive feedback, she said.

“We suggest to them what they can do to make it better the next time. Sometimes it’s from me, sometimes it’s peer-to-peer, but what is important is that the feedback is there,” she said. “And we stress that it’s not in a totally negative way. You can say ‘this is what I saw that was really great, but next time if you tried to do it this way, you might want to tweak it this way.’ It’s not what you say as much as it is how you say it.”

McFadden has been in the classroom teaching for seven years. Before that, she was working with the Georgia Extension Service and worked in healthcare for some years in assisted living, in a nursing home and in a hospice.

“I think that helps my teaching because I can bring those real world experiences to them,” she said.

She originally planned to be a teacher but was sidetracked.

“What brought me back was working at a hospice a few years ago. There was a young lady in her 20s whose last wish was to get her high school diploma. I worked with her to pass her GED, and we arranged a graduation ceremony in her back yard, a surprise for her and her family, and Erin Weaver who was principal at Central High in Macon at that time came in and gave her diploma to her.”

A friend of McFadden’s told Weaver how this all came about, and she said I should be in the classroom, she said.

“I thought about it for a while. This was in July, and in December I told my boss at hospice that I didn’t think I would be coming back in January, and I didn’t,” she said. “It was really a leap of faith because I was a department manager making good money at the hospice.”

McFadden substitute taught the rest of the school year, got a job as a paraprofessional the next school year, and then the following year got a job teaching.

“I enjoy my job. I love these kids, and seeing them succeed is worth more than any paycheck. I get excited when they’re successful; that’s what it’s all about. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have worked all of July and wouldn’t have taken 19 kids to San Diego for the national conference. I do what I can to help kids succeed.”

Houston County High has the largest FCCLA chapter in the state, she said, and they, along with Northside High, are some of the few industry-certified programs in the state. For the past two years they’ve been Chapter of the Year in Georgia.

“My classes – 144 students – are all full, and I have mostly hands-on assessments,” she said. “It’s not strictly textbooks, and they love that.”

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