Harrisburg 41-2
Harrisburg 41-2
Celebrating CTE Month with DECA
Every February, the CTE community celebrates CTE Month® to raise awareness of the role that CTE has in readying learners for college and career success. CTE Month is also a time to recognize and celebrate the achievements and accomplishments of our CTE partners at the local, state and national level.
This month, we turn the reins over to Mrs. Breanne Lynch, CTE Coordinator for the District, who will interview our CTSO advisors and student leaders. Today's episode features HHS's DECA program. Joining us are:
- Mrs. Kristi Danscisin | DECA Advisor & Business Education Instructor
- Evan Gran | HHS Senior & DECA Vice President
- Isaac Donelan | HHS Senior & DECA President
Transcript
00:00:03 JoAnne
We're giving you more than just the 411. This is the Harrisburg 412 podcast coming to you from Southern Sioux Falls and Harrisburg, SD.
00:00:16 JoAnne
We continue to celebrate CTE month here in the Harrisburg School District with our 4th HSC TSO DECA and that certainly was a mouthful of acronyms, so I will explain them here.
00:00:29 JoAnne
HHS, Harrisburg High school’s CTSO career and technical student organization DECA , The distributive education Clubs of America is joining us today.
00:00:42 JoAnne
They are an association of marketing students that encourage the development of business and leadership skills through academic conferences and competitions.
00:00:52 JoAnne
We will once again turn it over to Mrs. Brianne Lynch, our CTE coordinator for the Harrisburg School District who will interview our students and their advisor today.
00:01:03 Breanne
Alright, so we are here with Harrisburg High School.
00:01:06 Breanne
DECA and their advisor Mrs. KRISTI Danscisin.
00:01:08 Breanne
If you could share your name, your office and maybe the highlight of DECA for you so far.
00:01:15 Evan
So my name is Evan Gran and I'm the vice president of leadership and I think so far the highlight of my DECA de experience has been on competing in the state competitions.
00:01:24 Evan
It's just been a lot of fun and I've been able to hear like a lot of people speak on.
00:01:30 Evan
You know, wide ranges of like what they do in business and stuff like that so.
00:01:35 Isaac
My name is Isaac Donelon.
00:01:36 Isaac
I'm the DECA president.
00:01:37 Isaac
This year I'm a senior as well and I think my favorite highlight from DECA so far was competing last year in the state DECA competition.
00:01:45 Isaac
I competed with Evan and we did an event where we had to act like financial advisors to a judge and the judge asked us various questions and then we kind of acted as if we were advising the judge.
00:01:58 Isaac
So that was very fun.
00:02:01 Kristi
Great, my name is Mrs. Danscisin and I am the deck advisor and I would say unfortunately I haven't participated in the state competition yet, but I'm looking forward to it.
00:02:10 Kristi
It comes it's coming up here in February on the 27th, so my highlight has been really getting to lead the store, our student store called The Roar Store and working with the students to develop their skills with customer service and just learning how to run a store and then integrating some of the things that we do in the store into my classes like accounting and things like that.
00:02:36 Breanne
OK, so you talked about the Roar store.
00:02:37 Breanne
Which is like this hot thing right in Harrisburg High School.
00:02:39 Breanne
It's where the Froyo and the coffee comes from, so that's exciting.
00:02:42 Breanne
So can somebody give me the 411? How did this all come about? Because it's not every day that a high school has access to frozen yogurt and espresso in their commentary.
00:02:53 Isaac
Yeah, so I someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was two years ago, the roaster started off as just being a froyo machine and the room, and so we sold Froyo for 250 a cup and we've kept the price at that. And then as the years went on, we kind of expanded the store last year.
00:03:13 Isaac
At near the end of the year we got chips Cheetos and this year we got sodas and bubblers and we started making cookies and lattes and it basically just expanded as as time went on and it's grown into a huge thing that the students can work in to gain more skills in business.
00:03:34 Kristi
I would I would love to give a shout out to Mr. Ryan Kroger who is the prior DECA leader and his vision that he had for this war store, not just his vision but the other CTE leaders or CTS leaders.
00:03:49 Kristi
Because it doesn't the store doesn't happen just with DECA , but the other groups that will be highlighted in this podcast have all had a piece of that that you hear you heard about.
00:04:00 Kristi
Products there are things that our Pro start puts together and things like that, but you know really the vision behind the store was to have something real and something that can impact students where they see a business in the real world they see how decisions are made, they see not everything is.
00:04:21 Kristi
Exciting and fun, but you have to decide what to get.
00:04:25 Kristi
We got tiger wear this year.
00:04:27 Kristi
That's a big item.
00:04:28 Breanne
OK, tiger wear like what's tiger wear?
00:04:32 Kristi
Oh the anything that has the Harrisburg logo. You've got sweatshirts and T-shirts and we just got some sweatpants in and that's you know everybody has to have their gear to wear to game. So that was something that we added. And the marketing classes last year got to spend time.
00:04:52 Kristi
With the distributors looking at what was offered and they sat down and said hey, this is what's hot in the market right now.
00:05:00 Kristi
And make some choices based on that information and I mean.
00:05:04 Kristi
How cool is that yeah and stuff flew off the shelves, right?
00:05:07 Breanne
You hit up those freshmen hard with that freshman orientation, right?
00:05:10 Breanne
They're they're the captive audience and and also the location of the Roar store, right?
00:05:13 Breanne
It's in the freshman Academy Commons area, so it's close and I would say that's probably one of your target markets, right?
00:05:19 Breanne
If you look at the business education aspect of what the Roar Store has brought about.
00:05:23 Breanne
So being a former business educator, I love the Roar store.
00:05:26 Breanne
It's fantastic.
00:05:27 Breanne
What do you think some of the greatest learning outcomes?
00:05:30 Breanne
Or maybe DECA DECA like, experiences have been because of the.
00:05:34 Isaac
Store well, I think one of the biggest things that students learn in the store is just how to.
00:05:39 Isaac
Run a shop because you learn a lot of experience through just learning all of the activities that you need to do, like making cookies, making coffee, making Froyo and also the money side, you have to learn how to run a cash register.
00:05:52 Isaac
You have to learn how to take people's checks and things like that, so that really gives people some experience in managing a store so.
00:05:58 Breanne
You've talked about Froyo, cookies and coffee, and you.
00:06:00 Breanne
Have a business partner?
00:06:02 Breanne
Either you know a wholesale distributor or business partner that made those things possible, so Mrs. Danscisin can you speak to those a little bit?
00:06:09 Kristi
Yeah, and.
00:06:11 Kristi
Might hear a little bit of this through the Pro Start group as well, but we have a partnership with Cafea here in the area that we have all of our beans come from them and and they provide us with great prices and the ability to market for them because everybody likes their coffee and then they get business from outside the school as well.
00:06:35 Kristi
Let's see, you know we are standard vendors like Coke and Pepsi have done really great work with us to deliver.
00:06:43 Kristi
Add us to their delivery and even when we only need a couple cases of soda, they're right there smiling and bringing them to us just because they like the idea of the store, so at one time the deck of program was the number one.
00:06:55 Breanne
Grocer of Anna's frozen yogurt in the Midwest region.
00:06:58 Kristi
I believe that's.
00:06:58 Kristi
Still a true, it's still a.
00:06:59
Facts, yeah.
00:07:00 Breanne
True fact, and so the amount of Froyo that is sold in the halls of Harrisburg High School is a little bit insane.
00:07:05 Breanne
So there's multiple flavors.
00:07:06 Breanne
It's not just one offering, and you know you guys get to help determine some of those things as well.
00:07:11 Breanne
So the Roar store has been a great success story.
00:07:13 Breanne
Transition more back into different DECA opportunities.
00:07:16 Breanne
So when I attend a state leadership conference, for example, Evan, what do I get to see as a member of DECA .
00:07:22 Evan
Oh yeah, so like last year we had people speak from like the USD the Business School there you know you get to hear people from all backgrounds talk about like the speaker. Last year from USD talked about how she got her PhD in economics and how she's like.
00:07:41 Isaac
Gone through her career with that and aside from that, there's a lot of different stations with different judges, like how I touched on earlier.
00:07:49 Isaac
We were a financial advisor to our judge.
00:07:51 Isaac
There's a lot of different stations like that where people are doing events and competing in different things to their judges.
00:07:58 Kristi
Yeah, in fact I made a note here of the different clusters that there are for.
00:08:04 Kristi
Competition within the DECA organization and there's business and administration finance.
00:08:11 Kristi
You know those two kind of go hand in hand, entrepreneurship, hospitality and then marketing.
00:08:17 Kristi
So all of the deck of students I think have a different.
00:08:21 Kristi
They all have different personalities of course, but they're all looking at these different.
00:08:26 Kristi
Areas and some of them want to go into sports marketing and so that's where they really focus.
00:08:31 Kristi
Some of them are interested in the finance and.
00:08:34 Kristi
That's you know, like these two here that are sharing.
00:08:36 Kristi
So it's fun to see how their different personalities play into how they choose their events and things like that.
00:08:43 Kristi
The other thing that these guys didn't mention because it's new this year they're going to do a community service project at the conference as well.
00:08:51 Kristi
So while people, the layout of the conference... When you come in, there's a speaker and then we'll have the community service that goes on simultaneously as the students are going out and competing.
00:09:02 Kristi
So you might have a, you know a 15 minute window where you're gone from that and you go compete.
00:09:07 Kristi
So that they thought that would be fun to put the community service together.
00:09:11 Breanne
Sounds awesome, I got to see the DECA conference in action last year.
00:09:13 Breanne
I got to come and present the session, so that was really fun.
00:09:16 Breanne
So it's really fun to see students that are focused inside of the business sector, especially that finance sector.
00:09:21 Breanne
We think it's kind of a little bit boring and antiquated, but we still know that business is the number one four-year college.
00:09:26 Breanne
Major across the country, so knowing that there are still so many students that are going to Business School right that want that degree in a in a business area.
00:09:34 Breanne
It's really important that we have the deck program here in Harrisburg to help launch some of those experiences as well.
00:09:40 Breanne
What are some of the service opportunities may be available for DECA students right here in Harrisburg?
00:09:46 Isaac
Well, one of the things you can do for DECA state is you can actually sign up for a service event so I know two years ago when I first joined DECA , our group's event was a school wide food drive. So what we did was we organized the drive. We reach out to teachers and told them that.
00:10:01 Isaac
We're going to set a box outside your door, or we're going to go around door to door and take the food that the students had brought and they put them outside.
00:10:11 Isaac
And that was a big success.
00:10:12 Isaac
And then we took it over to the Harrisburg Food Pantry.
00:10:15 Kristi
We so this wasn't specific to DECA , but we did have here at Harrisburg.
00:10:20 Kristi
We have a senior project where students are encouraged to go do a community service activity and then come back and and report how that impacted the community, how it changed them.
00:10:32 Kristi
And it's just a great thing to to have them see the big picture.
00:10:36 Kristi
Not everything is just about finance and about your grades.
00:10:39 Kristi
It's about being a a well-rounded human being and giving back. Yes, right? I mean, that's that's maybe simplifying it a lot, but that's the end goal. When you leave high school. So this.
00:10:42 Breanne
That's what we got right?
00:10:43 Breanne
This is in this in well-rounded human beings, yeah.
00:10:52 Kristi
Last year we were we partnered with Joey Nielsen who's also a DECA member.
00:10:56 Kristi
One of our leaders as well, and his senior project was to have the Roar Store give two days of their profit.
00:11:05 Kristi
To the food pantry I guess the food pantry is probably big fans of duck at this point.
00:11:09 Kristi
Since we done.
00:11:10 Kristi
A couple of projects to them.
00:11:12 Kristi
But yeah, so that's not something we had done in the past.
00:11:15 Kristi
That's new and it it worked out really well.
00:11:18 Kristi
I think the store itself gave about $880, but then his project he went out and got.
00:11:25 Kristi
Other businesses in the area, maybe Mrs. D you could give a couple of the names of who donated, but they said hey we'll match profits and things like that, so we gave almost $3000 in the end through Joyce project to the food pantry, which is fantastic.
00:11:39 Breanne
Yeah, so anytime you're working in a nonprofit sector, right? So all of our CTO's technically we have our trust and agency accounts through the school district. But the goal is that that money needs to come out of there.
00:11:49 Breanne
Eventually some somehow to support your program, but then also to benefit those in our community.
00:11:53 Breanne
And so the beauty of those service project is you get to take the funds that you've raised and really benefit kids, community projects, those types of things.
00:12:01 Breanne
And so when you can find those matching donors, that's when your impact really starts to multiply.
00:12:06 Breanne
So Joey got to.
00:12:07 Breanne
I got to work with Joey a little bit, along with Mrs. Danscisin and Mrs. Around both through the Roar Store give back and find some donors that were able to multiply the revenues of the store. And so when you sit down and think that the Roar store clears about 400.
00:12:22 Breanne
Dollars per day on a good day.
00:12:24 Breanne
I mean, it's it's close to that Miss Danscisin and I have.
00:12:26 Breanne
Math $400.00 a day can make a huge impact to something like an area of food pantry, or, you know, a clothing drive or baby products needs or feminine products needs like we know that those are drives going on in our communities and and that those dollars are significant.
00:12:41 Breanne
And then when you can find matching sponsorships to go along with that, your your dollar really goes a lot further.
00:12:46 Breanne
So it's a super cool project to work with Joey and to benefit the Harrisburg.
00:12:50 Breanne
Area of food pantry and I think it's a good way to show how DECA and a senior project and the Roar Store and service learning can all come together to really create a really powerful and moving project.
00:13:01 Breanne
The story was picked up by the Sioux Valley News, so it's something that just continues to grow and spread a lot of goodwill.
00:13:07 Kristi
Well, in fact we are looking at doing a service project similar to what Joey did twice a year.
00:13:15 Kristi
So like maybe a fall semester project and a spring semester project.
00:13:20 Kristi
Where we give back to something that is in dire need in the Community because it was so successful and it everybody wants to give back and then you get busy and you're doing your homework and you're you're doing, you know and you're you're just living life.
00:13:33 Kristi
So this is the way that maybe we can push that and we can give the students an opportunity to maybe look at organizations that are out there.
00:13:40 Kristi
And and identify something with the need and go for it.
00:13:42 Breanne
Yeah, just spend some money on Froyo and you're helping a good cause, right?
00:13:45 Breanne
That's the messaging.
00:13:46 Breanne
We want to.
00:13:47 Kristi
It's a it's a win win win.
00:13:49 Breanne
Well, let's say I'm a freshman or sophomore.
00:13:51 Breanne
Maybe I haven't really found my place yet.
00:13:53 Breanne
Maybe I tried some sports or other clubs and groups and I I took a business class and I really loved that.
00:13:58 Breanne
How do I get involved?
00:13:59 Breanne
How do I become a DECA member?
00:14:01 Evan
Oh yeah, so the first step to becoming a DECA member is honestly just talking to either a member of the leadership team or Miss Dee.
00:14:08 Evan
You could always sit in on our deck of meetings. They happen every other Thursday at 7:30 in Misty's room B238. So yeah, I think that's the best way to get started.
00:14:20 Breanne
What if I'm a little timid like it might be intimidating to walk into that room?
00:14:25 Breanne
How can I feel a little bit more comfortable?
00:14:28 Breanne
Who should I talk to?
00:14:28 Isaac
Well, you can always start off by just sending an e-mail to misty and then we can always talk to you.
00:14:34 Isaac
Like if you want to set up a meeting with one of the officers, so it's just one-on-one.
00:14:39 Isaac
You don't have to go there with the whole group.
00:14:41 Isaac
We can kind of explain what the group does and then you can go to a meeting if you would.
00:14:45 Breanne
What do you focus on during your meeting time?
00:14:47 Kristi
D of late.
00:14:49 Kristi
We've been focusing on a couple of current events these gentlemen here in the room have done a very good job of going out and finding, you know what's really happening in our world right now.
00:14:58 Kristi
Whether it's economics, finance, different things like that and pulling that into the meeting to kick us off so everybody's got an interest in that.
00:15:05 Kristi
Obviously, if they're in DECA and that's been a benefit we talk about what's going on with our program, fundraising, what's coming up, like our leadership, and things like that.
00:15:16 Kristi
And in fact, if I can just... It's a great segue to something I did want to talk about and and get out there is that I have.
00:15:24 Kristi
I teach personal finance here at the school as well and and other business classes, so I see a a very big cross section of the school because that is a graduation requirement and I.
00:15:35 Kristi
Am very surprised at the number of people I hear.
00:15:38 Kristi
Say I want to start a business.
00:15:40 Kristi
I want to be my own boss.
00:15:42 Kristi
I'm going to do a side gig business.
00:15:44 Kristi
Or, you know, even it.
00:15:46 Kristi
Side hustles a big deal or they they want to be a doctor or dentist, but they want to run their own practice well, hey, that's a business.
00:15:54 Kristi
So when I look at it and I see all these students, I feel like we shouldn't have.
00:16:00 Kristi
Hundreds of people in our DECA program, you know, not 203040, so that's something that I really want to focus on here in the in the coming years.
00:16:08 Kristi
Is that if you are even thinking about doing a business in any way, shape or form, this is a great start for you.
00:16:15 Kristi
This and some of the business classes that we offer here at the school.
00:16:19 Kristi
And to do that.
00:16:22 Kristi
I would like to add on amplify our meetings a little bit as we go forward and maybe bring in some of those business leaders out in our Community that are in these clusters that I mentioned.
00:16:35 Kristi
You know, like some entrepreneurs that we know.
00:16:37 Kristi
Oh, they're all over the place and and get them to come into our meetings and add that to our current events.
00:16:42 Kristi
You know a live person where they can see.
00:16:45 Kristi
Hey, this is feasible.
00:16:46 Kristi
This is this is realistic for.
00:16:47 Breanne
Me yeah, so any of our listeners that are picking up this podcast.
00:16:50 Breanne
If you'd be interested in interacting with our DECA program, either at a.
00:16:53 Breanne
Monthly meeting or.
00:16:55 Breanne
Just in some way in a class something like that.
00:16:57 Breanne
Please reach out.
00:16:57 Breanne
There'll be a link and contact information in the show notes of this podcast, as well as the other CSO celebration podcasts, but I agree.
00:17:05 Breanne
And in a Harrisburg high school, in a student body population of close to 1700.
00:17:10 Isaac
We should have easily 100 kids in DECA right Mm-hmm.
00:17:13 Kristi
To get there, yeah, well, there's been a lot of focus on.
00:17:18 Kristi
The store getting set up and we had, you know, I think all of our student organization suffered a little bit when we were out of school.
00:17:26 Kristi
And you know, at home schooling and things like that, so you know we're back.
00:17:31 Kristi
We're ready to go.
00:17:32 Kristi
I've got a great group of seniors at that are leadership this year, and boy, we're going to miss them next year.
00:17:37 Kristi
You know, we've got to get those underclassmen in and get them get them rolling, you know, to continue marching forward.
00:17:43 Breanne
But it sounds like there's a place for everybody, even if I'm just new and I don't have a lot of experience.
00:17:48 Breanne
But if I want to try business or if I just have an interest in it, or maybe crypto was the thing or I just something in the news piqued my interest.
00:17:55 Breanne
I should definitely stop by and check out a meeting absolutely.
00:18:00 Kristi
There are six, you know very successful DECA programs in the Sioux Falls, the surrounding schools as well.
00:18:06 Kristi
So that's something I'd like to see in the future as well.
00:18:08 Kristi
And and I just haven't experienced it yet.
00:18:10 Kristi
That partnership maybe between some of us.
00:18:13 Kristi
Larger schools in the area to get to know each other a little bit better, maybe right at some conferences together.
00:18:19 Kristi
I'd like to see that grow because these kids all know each other from sporting events and different things like that, so maybe we can have a little bit more interaction and and grow the programs that way.
00:18:30 Breanne
Can you highlight the CTS revitalization grant and how the CTS is at Harrisburg High School are coming together to really provide some rich experiences for students in DECA and other organizations.
00:18:40 Kristi
Yes, in fact give a shout out to some of the other CSO leaders that that wrote the bulk of the grants.
00:18:47 Kristi
Some of us proofread it, and so I want to give credit where credit is.
00:18:51 Kristi
That I think Tracy Kern, Tara Fastert and Deb Rambo really put that together and and did a fantastic job.
00:19:01 Kristi
It is money that is offered out there for CTC TSO's or organizations that are looking to continue to grow. Maybe revitalize because?
00:19:11 Kristi
Of the thing I just mentioned, you know there's been a couple of down years a little bit, so we put together a program to get some leadership training to come in here to Harrisburg.
00:19:21 Kristi
Get some here and just a host of things that we want to do nights, yeah.
00:19:25 Breanne
Etiquette couple of like professional dress seminars and also a way to promote past successes right?
00:19:32 Breanne
There's going to be a really awesome think like sports all time, greatest list, like track records and sports fans.
00:19:39 Kristi
Oh yeah, yeah Mm-hmm.
00:19:39 Breanne
But for the CTS's, which I think will be a great thing to see in that CTE hallway and really highlight.
00:19:45 Breanne
The accomplishments of different CTSO programs throughout Harrisburg's history.
00:19:49 Kristi
And marketing, you know when we when we've gone in the past to.
00:19:54 Kristi
Talk to freshmen and and show our show off our program.
00:19:57 Kristi
You know, we've got, I think a poster that Mrs.
00:20:00 Kristi
D made.
00:20:01 Kristi
We're going to make we're going to get these really cool posters that are premade very professionally done that we can take with us when we do some of these things.
00:20:11 Breanne
So let's jump back into that.
00:20:12 Breanne
So Evan and Isaac, like what made you take the leap?
00:20:15 Breanne
Why did you join?
00:20:16 Isaac
Well, I've always been interested in business and I kind of knew DECA y existed before.
00:20:21 Isaac
But my my freshman year I just didn't really.
00:20:24 Isaac
I wasn't sure if I wanted to join any like clubs like that, but my sophomore year I was like, yeah, I do want to join some clubs.
00:20:30 Isaac
So I joined DECA.
00:20:31 Evan
Yeah, I kind of had the same story.
00:20:33 Evan
I joined my freshman year because I wasn't sure of what I wanted to do, but I always knew that.
00:20:38 Evan
And this was a large area of interest for me.
00:20:42 Evan
My mom works in business, so I really just wanted to follow in her footsteps and that's why I joined ECHO.
00:20:48 Breanne
What do you think the greatest learning outcome of working?
00:20:50 Breanne
In the store has been. I think dealing with customer service has been the biggest thing because I already have had jobs where you have to deal with customers.
00:21:00 Isaac
But in the store it's kind of amplified, you know, because my job at the grocery store, the only customer service I have is when people ask me where something is.
00:21:10 Isaac
But at the store, it's like every single customer you have to, you know, say hi.
00:21:13 Isaac
What can I get?
00:21:14 Evan
For you stuff like that, yeah, I basically have the same thing.
00:21:18 Evan
It's it's just like building the skills in order to, you know, start the small conversations and to be able to.
00:21:26 Evan
Get over like the initial shyness of like the customer interactions has like definitely helped me the most so.
00:21:33 Breanne
Mrs. D shared some of her vision and goals for the future of DECA .
00:21:36 Breanne
Do either of you have goals that maybe five years from now after graduation you'd like to come back and share your financial successes with us and maybe degree paths and programs.
00:21:46 Breanne
What would you want to see?
00:21:47 Breanne
Harrisburg High School DECA look like in five years.
00:21:51 Isaac
Well, I think these projects that Misty mentioned and the service projects was a really big thing that I think it would be really cool if we saw more things like that like community impact and also just competing at the state and national competitions.
00:22:05 Isaac
I think it would be great to see more membership in those things.
00:22:09 Evan
Yeah, yeah, I think growth is the big one for me.
00:22:12 Evan
I want to see DECA like expanded size and years and I think that everything that we have going for us like right now is definitely going to help us grow.
00:22:20 Evan
Thanks so much so much in the future, it's there's a solid foundation for Harrisburg High School.
00:22:25 Breanne
DECA or sure.
00:22:26 Breanne
Thanks for joining me today.
00:22:27 Kristi
Thank you, thank you for having.
00:22:28 Isaac
Thank you for having us.
00:22:29 Breanne
You can find out more about Harrisburg High School DECA by following the show notes underneath this podcast.
