Cumberland County High School senior Britney McDaniel will lead Tennessee’s Family, Career and Community Leaders of America in outreach program development
At the state conference for Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (“FCCLA”) in May 2014, members elected Britney McDaniel, a 17-year-old senior at Cumberland County High School (“CHS”) in Crossville, Tennessee. as their state president for the 2014-15 school year.
Along with her school adviser Rachel Shoemaker, McDaniel will serve on the state executive council with five other state officers and their advisers. They have developed goals for high school and elementary school programs throughout Tennessee. McDaniel said, “We have a membership campaign we’re working on. We’re also trying to push social media because what teenager doesn’t have social media. It goes with our membership campaign, but also, in itself, we want to make sure we’re pushing social media with FCCLA out there.” McDaniel maintains the state Twitter account.
McDaniel and the state officers will also focus on involving members in every aspect of the organization’s name. They are encouraging chapters to develop programs that encourage members to be leaders in their families and in their local communities and develop leadership skills for their future careers.
Shoemaker, who teaches Family and Consumer Science classes at CCHS, said that McDaniel has handled herself well in her new position. She said, “She reminds others, when they try to set her apart from themselves, that she’s ‘just a regular girl’.
“Britney is a very mature young lady,” said Shoemaker. “She made up her own mind about resigning from cheerleading during her senior year after years of doing it in order to focus on her job as FCCLA state president.”
McDaniel said, “The week we were at state was the week of cheer tryouts back home, so … I called my coaches and told them, ‘I wasn’t expecting to get the position that I got, but now that I’m the president of Tennessee, I feel that my focus needs to be on Tennessee FCCLA — making sure I’m doing everything I can to make our program successful.’ And I knew FCCLA would take me farther in my career goals because I wasn’t planning on cheering in college. I just knew that I needed to run with FCCLA.”
When McDaniel called her mother Tammy McDaniel on the night her win was announced at the state conference, Mrs. McDaniel said that she was as stunned as her daughter, but said, “Of course, I am real proud of her.”
A personal goal that McDaniel has set for herself is to speak directly with as many Tennessee members as possible. She said, “These people are looking up to me as their president, but I don’t want to be put on such a pedestal that they’re afraid to talk with me. I think that if I can just mingle with the members and tell them ‘Hey, I’m just a normal teenager just like you, and I’m here to do a job’ that we can still have conversations.”
Additionally, McDaniel competed on the national level in the job interview STAR event (Students Taking Action with Recognition) for which she received a gold medal. Since second grade, she has known that she wants to be a teacher, so she used this project to research her future career. She said, “You have to find out all the specific job requirements of that job like hours, wages, etc. for my portfolio. … I think [the judges] have 10 minutes before you go in for the interview. They look through it and ask you questions based off of what’s in there … and some of them ask questions like ‘Why are you more qualified than all the other applicants?’ and ‘What skills do you have for this job?’”
She has been competing in STAR events since she was a high school freshman. She said, “When I knew that … when I got past district [competitions] to go to state and meet all kinds of people, I was just so excited because I just love meeting new people, talking to people, making new friendships. That was something that really drove me to work hard.”
Her local FCCLA chapter at CCHS actively plans for community outreach. McDaniel said that one of her favorite projects for class has been making sock monkeys for patients at the local hospital emergency room. She also expressed excitement about a project called “Little Free Library” that her local chapter has planned for this school year. She said, “Mrs. Shoemaker actually found it on Pinterest. You get these cabinets from Lowe’s—like an unfinished cabinet. You put a glass door on it, and put books inside it. And then you place it somewhere like [Centennial Park] or a little neighborhood. So it’s a little library for the kids in that neighborhood to come and get a book…. We want to find some communities where kids don’t get a chance to go to the library much.”
When speaking to potential members, McDaniel likes to tell them about their FCCLA trips, the people they will meet and their community outreach programs and the value of listing this leadership organization on their college applications. She said, “We try to encourage them with how much fun it’s going to be, but it’s not just for fun. We’re also learning leadership skills. … We’re learning how to be strong leaders in our community with community service.”