Junior Sandeeya Farruk, who attends Cedar Lane High School, uses scented hand scrub on a fellow student. Photo by Monika Bapna
Following the twisted hallways inside Marshall High School leads to the side of the school not known to many where classes like Cosmetology are held. However, on Friday Jan. 27, the Cosmetology room was teeming with adults and students alike waiting for their hair or face appointments.
Upon entering the room what meets the eyes is a conventional looking classroom with desks, chairs and a blackboard. However, adjacent to the classroom is another room that resembles a posh hair salon with gleaming floors, glass cases holding shampoo bottles and an array of salon hair dryers lined against one side of the wall.
This is where the crowd was gathered on Friday with students practicing the hair cutting and skin care skills they learned in class on their customers. This event, held every few months by the Cosmetology students and teacher advisor Venessa Hinton, has been gaining momentum as more and more students enroll in the class and people become aware of the real life application of the skills they learn in the class.
COSMETOLOGY is a two-year course at Marshall, in which the first year is focused on learning the basics of hair cutting. The students learn "everything from face shapes to hair cutting," Hinton said.
Hinton, who has been teaching the class for six years, said that most students who take the first year often reenroll for the second year despite it being more challenging. "The second year is where the students are introduced to chemical work and skin care," she said.
After the culmination of the two year course, students are eligible to sit for the state board exam, where upon passing they receive their license to work at any salon in the state.
"The class is 100 percent geared to prepare students for the real world business," Hinton said.
Her words are echoed by junior Jaquelynne Chanawi, a Cosmetology student who managed the business aspect of the event on Friday. The funds collected from their events usually finance field trips that educate students about the real world application of the skills they learn in class, Chanawi said.
"The students have a trip planned to attend the International Beauty Show (IBS) in New York, where professional artists can demonstrate new techniques that can be really beneficial for the students," Hinton said.
However, the class does not focus exclusively on hair cutting. In addition to learning about skin care techniques, the class is a source of confidence for some.
"This class gave me a boost in confidence," junior Cindy Flores, who attends Mclean High School but comes to Marshall for the class, said.
Flores’ dream job is to own her own salon one day and claimed that this class brings her closer to that goal every day.
TO STUDENTS like Flores, Cosmetology is more than just a class to learn hair cutting. It is a class that allows students to get a head start on their careers by teaching them real world skills, an objective, Hinton stresses, that defines the class as a whole.