Amy Gleaton is in her 25th year of teaching, but found her calling in Family and Consumer Sciences( FCS) more than two decades ago, and looks to take the FCS program to new heights at the newlyrenovated Cullman Middle School.
Gleaton said during her early days teaching in Oak Mountain, she was helping out with a food and nutrition course and quickly realized the topic and curriculum was something she was personally passionate about. After that, she returned to school to pursue a degree specifically in the FCS field.
“ It’ s a field that combines creativity and necessity, and that can be empowering. Everyone has to eat. Everyone wears clothes. Everyone lives somewhere, and wants that space to feel like home. Everyone has to interact with others,” Gleaton explained.“ FCS teaches us how to take control of our life necessities and make them as personal as we want, as extravagant as we want, and as empowered as we want.”
Family and Consumer Sciences curriculum covers Culinary skills & Dietetics, Food Science, Textiles, Apparel Construction and Fashion Design, Architecture and Interior Design, Human Development and Relationships, as well as Personal and Family Finance. It incorporates careers in Hospitality & Tourism, Education, Health Science and Human Services.
“ FCS skills can be used to empower your own personal needs, or they can provide a professional career that impacts your community and beyond,” Gleaton said.“ Those skills have a rippling impact as they help make you your best and, therefore, help you do your best in all your endeavors.”
Now in her third year teaching FCS at CMS, Gleaton said the program has been incredibly active. Gleaton started at CMS during the first phase of construction, at a time when the FCS program was housed in an older building located beside the campus’ old round building, which provided a small but charming space for the program.
“ The building was showing its age, but it also had beautiful high ceilings, antique moldings and hardwood floors and provided a great classroom environment, but had only a tiny sewing room and an outdated five-unit kitchen facility,” Gleaton explained.
Once construction ramped up, the program temporarily shifted into a regular classroom to make way for demolition work and construction on a brand-new FCS facility, with the program adapting to the interim space with a focus on careers and special events.
But now, the FCS program is officially moving into is specifically-designed large classroom with multi-use tables that allow space for cooperative learning and in-classroom lab activities; a labs facility that houses five modern kitchen units for students to learn culinary skills and dietetics; a large sewing counter that allows for up to eight dedicated sewing stations for apparel construction and fashion design labs as well as interior design labs. The facility also houses additional storage space and a modern laundry facility to meet the needs of students and lab activities.
“ We are all super excited to get into the new facility and see what all we can do! Our second-year FCS students are already utilizing the sewing space for their interior design projects as they design the interior of a dollhouse from top to bottom, and all of my students are incredibly excited for our cooking labs,” Gleaton said of the program, which now serves 135 students.“ A Family and Consumer Sciences Program is a place where students can experience a creative outlet, can feel adventurous as they practice so many diverse activities and topics, can learn to understand themselves and their relationships with others and develop healthy and empowering skills that can impact their entire lives. This is beneficial for all students of all ages and their community, but to address the middle school years specifically, it can be even more impactful as it can help ground them during a developmentally difficult time.”
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