BY DANIEL COWEN
Students from Cooper City High School’s DECA chapter attended a Leadership Training Conference in Orlando, Florida to hone their leadership and presentation skills for upcoming DECA conferences.
Distributive Clubs of America prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality and management in high schools and colleges around the world. At CCHS, DECA teaches students about business, marketing, managing your money and a lot more about the world outside of high school.
LTC is a two-day workshop sessions about leadership, networking, and thinking quick on your feet. Organized by Florida DECA, LTC presents workshops that focus on leadership and training students for upcoming competitions. Some of the workshops at LTC include leadership, dressing for success, networking, and being creative with marketing and finance. State officers speak at LTC, as well as officers and representatives from Training Companies such as “Focus Training”
Focus Training trains students for success in leadership. It incorporates leadership training with fun activities to train students in an enjoyable, organized, and effective manner. One of the activities Focus Training did was having the students come up with a speech in around two to four minutes. The speech was required to be at least one minute long. The activity teaches students how to think on their feet to produce affective ways to persuade and inform crowds.
On the first day that DECA arrived in Orlando, the students went to the opening ceremony, which gave them an oral introduction to the new Harry Potter World. Two guest speakers were present at the opening ceremony, the first of which talked about the architecture and building of the new themed section of Islands of Adventure. The second speaker talked about the merchandise that ties in to the marketing of Islands of Adventure.
The second day the students attended Islands of Adventure at night to view Harry Potter world. After coming back from the theme park, a low ropes course challenge was awaiting the leadership students. The obstacle consisted of many ropes, and the students had to utilize each other’s trust to get through the obstacle course. The point of the ropes course was to learn and gain someone’s trust.
“LTC was very educational but on the same note, it was a lot of fun to be with my friends. The amusement park was really fun too,” DECA member Ashley Morin said.
LTC with the help of Focus Training trained students to become excellent leaders and to become smarter in the world of finance and business. Students learned about the many aspects of business and how to manage your money to become successful in the real world.
“LTC was a good experience because it improves your business skills,” DECA Vice President Jeremy Rosenstein said.
