From left, back row: Kennedy Mistishin and Zoey Goldman, who served as chairpersons for the FCCLA Drive Through Breakfast. From left, kneeling: Kaitlyn McDermott, FCCLA Secretary, and Caitlyn Burdick, FCCLA President. Students are holding items that were distributed at the event. 
First Row Front (Left to Right) – Kennedy Mistishin, Zoey Goldman.
Second Row (L to R) – Katarina Wood, Paige Lee, Lena Piccolino, Maggie Millon (Mrs. Claus), Kyle Guarino (Santa), Caitlyn Burdick FCCLA President, Kaeli Romanowski, and Kailey Tickner.
Third Row (L to R) – Jaiden DeRosa, Luke Janiszewski, Thomas Chernasky, Caden Brungard, and Paige Bell. All in photo attended and worked at the FCCLA Drive Through Breakfast.
The magic of the holiday season was in the air for Western Wayne’s FCCLA Club as they hosted their first drive-through Holiday Breakfast on Saturday, Dec. 12, with all proceeds benefitting the Wayne County Children’s Christmas Bureau.
FCCLA has held this event in the past hosted in the high school cafeteria. Due to COVID-19, they worked, just as hard as Santa’s best elves, and found a way to make this event possible for the community even during this challenging time.
Instead of serving food in the cafeteria, the FCCLA students brought food out to their customers waiting in their cars. Even Santa made a socially distanced appearance on a local fire truck. Instead of having stations for people to shop at, this year, the FCCLA students made sure to have all gifts for the little ones ready ahead of time for none other than Mrs. Claus to pass out to the eager kids in their family cars.
Some of the items distributed included: lollipops, coloring books, crayons, and McDonald’s coupons among other fun gifts.
Many of FCCLA’s club members worked to make this event possible. This year’s club officers include Caitlyn Burdick, president; Zoey Goldman, vice president; Kaitlyn McDermott, secretary; Tarena Strasburger, treasurer; Paige Bell and Kailey Tickner, public relations.
FCCLA members Kennedy Mistishin and Zoey Goldman worked as student chairpersons for this event to lead the students in making the breakfast a success.
Kennedy had worked to lead the event last year. This year Zoey stepped into a co-leadership position. Both girls found planning this event to be a very rewarding experience.
“My favorite part is the execution of putting together an event of this nature,” Kennedy explained. “I love when it all comes together at the end. This is very different than our event last year, but it is still very rewarding in different ways especially because we have the chance to do this for the community during this challenging time.”
The students have been busy working to plan this event for a few weeks by making decorations, getting gift bags together, and preparing other items and aspects of the event. It truly was a team effort by all students and staff involved.
The drive- through breakfast with Santa was not FCCLA’s only event this year. The group also, earlier this school year, assisted the Blue Star Mothers of Northeastern Pennsylvania in writing 100 cards to active patriots. Students got to hand-write personal letters to patriots stationed all over the world.
Zoey Goldman, vice president of FCCLA, said this activity was special to her.
“I have a number of family members who have served, so writing these letters felt especially meaningful to me,” Zoey explained.
Along with writing letters to patriots and hosting their breakfast, FCCLA has held a few meetings this year mostly online. Secretary of the club Kaitlyn McDermott explained how it has been challenging to get information out to members.
“I have used email and Google Classroom to distribute a lot of information to our members,” Kaitlyn explained. “I think it has been successful because we have 30 members in the club this year.”
As a group FCCLA has many purposes including to provide opportunities for personal development and preparation for adult life, to strengthen students for society, to encourage individual and group involvement in helping achieve global cooperation and harmony, to encourage democracy through cooperative action in the home and community, and to promote greater understanding between youth and adults and many more.
FCCLA is so grateful to the district for allowing the events they had this year so far to be possible. The group looks forward to finding creative ways to hold more events in the future for all to enjoy.
