Three GAVC students take first place in state-level SkillsUSA competition

Three Morris Community High School and Grundy Area Vocational Center students, Bradley Raffel, Valeria Garcia and Kira Dergo will be traveling to Atlanta in June after finishing first place at the state-level SkillsUSA competition in Peoria.

Raffel finished in first place for his performance in the criminal justice category of the competition, while Dergo and Garcia finished in first for their preschool interactive bulletin boards. Garcia also finished in first for her teaching and learning portfolio, and in second for the early childhood education category.

Raffel said his job during the competition was to conduct a traffic stop and suspicious person investigation. He was then rated on officer safety, procedure, radio communication and his arrest technique. In his case, he pulled over a driver who wouldn’t open their window at first, and then wouldn’t get off the phone.

He knew exactly what to do, following the hours of practice he’s put into the competition in the six weeks leading up to it. Raffel said he practiced twice per day every week for around six weeks in the lead-up to the competition.

Instructor Brent Dite said he had four students compete, and they traveled together to the Peoria competition.

“All the preparation and being able to be there with three other people who practiced with me was nice,” Raffel said. “I had other peoplet hat were able to give me feedback, and it’s a group that’s enjoyable to be around. It wasn’t a short practice.”

Garcia and Dergo had a bumpier ride to get to the competition, but they were thrilled with how well their project turned out. Together, they built a bulletin board full of colored fish to help preschool students learn their colors. The board had fish of five different colors, orange, green, red, blue and yellow. Children would take the baby fish out of a bucket and attach it to the board to the fish that corresponded to its color.

Dergo said she and Garcia had a spot set up with their project and two people came over and interviewed them, giving them sample questions of what a kid might ask and asking them to explain how they’d handle different scenarios.

Garcia said her teaching and learning portfolio competition ran similarly to edTPA, a licensing program Illinois uses to ensure teachers are qualified.

“I have to record myself teaching a lesson and then give a presentation about all the things that went well, everything that went wrong, and what standards I’d set out to reach,” Garcia said. “I taught second graders about adjectives, verbs and nouns.”

Dergo and Garcia agreed that they both knew they wanted to be teachers from a young age. Dergo plans on going to college for early childhood education, while Garcia hopes to teach second grade.

Raffel has a similar story with law enforcement: He’s grown up around police officers and knew it’s what he wanted to be.

They’ll each be traveling to Atlanta now for the national competition, which Dite said is always more in-depth, at least on the law enforcement front.

“There’s going to be more scenarios, seven or nine events,” Dite said. “He’ll probably be lifting a fingerprint or dealing with a medical emergency, and he’s probably going to be dealing with someone having an emotional act of some kind going on. They take what’s done at the state level and blow it up.”

More than 6,000 students participate at SkillsUSA every year, and it’s one of the largest skills competitions in the world.