LANCASTER — Between 120 and 140 Jobs 4 California Graduates youth from across California demonstrated their career readiness and leadership abilities through a series of workshops and competitions at the second annual California Career Development Conference hosted Thursday.
The conference was at the Lifelong Learning Administration Corp. headquarters in the Lancaster Business Park as part of Career and Technical Education Month.
Lifelong Learning is a nonprofit educational services organization that provides administrative, educational and back-office support to Learn4Life’s network of charter schools.
The nonprofit Jobs 4 California Graduates is part of Jobs for America’s Graduates, also known as JAG. The program provides job skills, hands-on experience and a year of follow-up to support students’ transition from graduation to employment, military service, and/or post-secondary education.
The students competed for an opportunity to attend the National Career Development Conference to be held April 24 to 26 in Indianapolis. The competitive events included prepared speaking, career preparation and employability skills.
The workshops included culinary arts, where students frosted chocolate muffins with chocolate frosting and decorated them with white and blue sprinkles and financial literacy. Students could also build a robot in the robotics workshop, learn how to do CPR, do balloon design and Cricut 101. Another workshop focused on construction activity where students learned how to make a stool. Students could also learn balloon design.
Jennifer Beier, a lead teacher from the Murrieta site, guided about 12 students through one of the culinary workshops.
“You guys will be using different piping bags and tips,” she said.
Student Gabrielle Brown, who is also from Murrieta, helped prepare the workshop supplies by filling piping bags with chocolate frosting.
“I am in the works of doing an online bakery,” she said.
She added the culinary program gave her the first push into her first culinary job.
“It put me in a lot of positions not only school-wise but it put me in my career,” she said.
In the Diego room, which hosted the Cricut 101 workshop, JAG specialist Diana Olivares explained to students seated around a table how to decorate their JAG cups.
Cricut (pronounced the same as cricket) is a smart cutting machine that can be used to create custom arts and crafts such as vinyl decals or stickers, or cutting paper, cardboard and plastic.
“The imagination can go wild,” Olivares said. “Today, what we’re doing is students are going to get their cup that belong to the JAG progaram, and they’re going to be selecting stickers that speak to them. Either they want to be a carpenter; they want to be a teacher, so those are the stickers that we made up that are goal-oriented. … It’s their vision cup to remember all the things they have, what they’re working on and just not to forget what the end goal is when they come to school and they’re drinking their water.”
Student John Oros decorated his cup with decals, including a car, dog tags and blue-collar worker tools such as a wrench and hammer.
“I want to be in the military,” he said, adding that he likes cars. “I’m having a great time; I’m learning a lot.”
The event included a speech by keynote speaker Frida Medrano, national president for the JAG Career Association.
“Being a part of JAG I have been given so many experiences and opportunities, and one of that is taking what we learn at our conferences and using it and incorporating them within our speeches and our workshops,” she said.
Medrano shared her story of how, at 4 years old, she, her sister, mother and grandmother moved from the United States to Mexico for three years.
“Those three years completely changed my life,” she said.
When she returned to the United States in the middle of her first-grade year, she didn’t speak English and struggled in school, including making friends. She recalled one day when she had a meltdown and her parents had to physically carry her to class. She ended up making a friend.
“I’m so glad that my parents didn’t let me give up on myself that day,” she said, “because that experience, from first grade, I still carry with me to this day, especially when I try something new. Especially when I’m stepping out of my comfort zone and I want to give up and turn around and not do it because it’s scary, or because I’ve had enough of it. I think about that and I’m like, it really can’t be that bad. I’m just going to get through the day.”
She encouraged the students to go through with it and not let anything hold them back.
“I lost opportunities because of fear, because of anxiety,” she said. “I lost opportunities because I thought I wasn’t good enough.”
