Four students from Adair County’s JAG program won first place in the Red Division for JAG Kentucky’s Career Development Conference Regional Competition last Tuesday.
Hunter Hendren, Colten Gravel, Gabriel Spillman, and Ethan Dial made up JAG’s Creative Decision Making Team, who competed along with 13 other Adair JAG participants during the competition, and against other schools in the Red region.
“They broke us up into different regions by just a random draw because we’re spread out over the state in weird locations. The program is starting to spread in the state so there is a big concentration in the eastern part… they couldn’t geographically split it. There were 30 schools that were in our Red region. But I think there were only 20 that competed in this particular event, which was the Creative Decision Making Team,” stated JAG teacher Denise Pyles Grant.
Hendren, Gravel, Spillman, and Dial’s team was tasked with developing an idea to improve their school. Two days before they presented, they practiced using an old JAG prompt. On the day of the competition, they dressed up in suits, gave speeches, and pitched their idea to judges over Zoom.
“(The prompt) was open-ended… they had five different points they had to address on it. They had thirty minutes from the time I gave them a prompt to construct an answer, to make some type of visual, and decide how they were going to do the presentation,” said Grant.
The Creative Decision Making Team’s idea was a club called GROW. GROW’s purpose, the team said, was to “boost mental health, academic support, and school spirit” by way of meeting “every week to discuss plans to improve the school.” Their pitch to the judges about increasing participation in GROW included weekly door prizes and the club’s visible impact of helping students, teachers, and staff. Their plan to fund the club was to have snack sales and catalog sales every two to three months. After being established at the school, the boys said that ideally GROW would itself branch out beyond ACHS and become an organization that “helps kids in and out of school not only make friends, but also to GROW.”
After their presentation, one of the judges stated, “Boys, that was a fantastic presentation.”
The JAG program is a nationwide program dedicated to helping students transition from school to the workforce. It seeks to educate students in practical life skills such as building resumes, filing taxes, and a year of follow-up post-graduation to help guide the program’s graduates. Most students in JAG, according to its website, “face 11 obstacles ranging from poverty to past trauma.”
“There are (what JAG calls) ‘barriers’ you have to have to qualify to be in the program,” Grant explained.
The program was founded in 1979 in Delaware, but Adair County’s iteration is only in its second year. Grant feels this makes her team’s win all the more significant.
As of now, Grant says that while it is a great idea, there are currently no plans to make the GROW club an actual organization at the school.
However, winning regionals does mean that the boys will continue competing.
On March 25 and March 26, Hendren, Gravel, Spillman, and Dial will travel to Lexington for the state competition where they will represent Adair County.
“They deserve to be celebrated,” said Grant. “I’m trying to teach them… a way to make things better.”
By Kenley Godby
kenley@adairvoice.com
