MONTE VISTA – Monte Vista High School sent seven competitors to the SkillsUSA State Leadership Conference on April 9-11, at the Pueblo Convention Center in Pueblo. 

SkillsUSA is an organization that helps prepare high school and college students who are studying for careers in technical, skilled, and service professions. A group of Monte Vista High School students placed third at the conference in Entrepreneurship, and others placed individually.  

Woodshop Teacher Aaron Woodke was pleased with his students. 

“I am very proud of these students. This was a chance for Monte Vista students to showcase what they have learned this school year in cabinet making, construction, and leadership activities. This was a great networking and connecting event with industry for kids. We had kids in many different categories including job interview, entrepreneurship, related technical math, carpentry, and cabinet making. They all did an exceptional job. I am very proud of these students.”  

Woodke said that seven kids participated in various competitions. He said that they had their entrepreneurial group that consisted of four kids who took third place including Jayda Woodke, Evie Hinds, Mazi Hinds, and William Walker. 

“They didn’t make it to nationals, but they did place third out of the entire state of Colorado, and that’s very good.”  

The entrepreneurial group was required to create an item or items to sell, and then they were required to explain their item or items, why it would be a good idea to buy them, and they also had a question-and-answer period about their items. According to the students, they had to give a presentation.  

Three of the four students in the entrepreneurial group spoke about their experiences and how they felt about attending the conference.  

Jayda Woodke spoke about her experience and stated that she really enjoyed it and was excited, “The first couple of days we spent setting up and the next day we competed in entrepreneurship.” Woodke stated that for the conference they built a key holder with wooden mountains. She explained that the key holders were either made from dry eraser boards on top, or wood, and the wooden ones were either stained or painted. “We presented for 15 minutes and then answered questions for ten minutes. It was a great experience, and I really liked getting to work with the people that I worked with.”  

Mazi Hinds stated that she also had a good experience at the conference, she enjoyed it. She remembers preparing for the event and trying to make sure that they had everything properly rehearsed. “It was a lot of waiting for when we were going to present to the judges. We went in and presented. We had pamphlets with other things we made and had for sale, and an example of one of our products. We each had our own individual sections that we covered. I think it went really well. We made mountain key chain holders, with hooks at the bottom for keys.” Hinds stated that the neat thing about it was that they sold the Key holder on their way in to give the presentation. “When we were outside rehearsing this guy came up and asked if he could buy it from us, but we told him we kind of need it for our presentation. So, he gave us $50 as collateral, and we gave him back $25 later.” 

William Walker also spoke about his experience attending the competition, stating that along with presenting the key holder to the judges, they also spoke about other projects they made. “We gave the judges an overview of our entire business.” 

Walker stated that he was not at all nervous giving the overview because he is a good public speaker, so he had no problem presenting. Walker stated that he made a product brochure for the event, that contained a business description and had a google order form attached to it. “I also told them that we were the first buy one get one brand in our school to have the idea. We also did it through fundraising to help the community.”  Walker stated he was also asked about shipping.  

Walker stated that although he did not attend the awards ceremony it felt nice to take third place.  

Woodke stated that they had a lot of other individual results that were good too. Woodke also wanted to mention that in August, his woodshop class will be actively seeking projects from residents of Monte Vista, who would like things worked on by the class or projects made.  

Last year the class made wooden jewelry boxes for the Veterans out at the Veterans Community Living Center at Homelake, and the kids are looking forward to doing something similar for the folks at The Rock Creek Rehabilitation Nursing Home in Monte Vista too.  

Woodke is proud of his students and all they have accomplished and is looking forward to the students’ upcoming Mother’s Day projects, that the students are all currently working on for their mothers.