What’s Right With Our Schools: Ridgeland High School FBLA
ROSSVILLE, Ga. (WDEF) – High School students in Georgia are learning how to become the business leaders of tomorrow. Lessons in employability and entrepreneurship are sowing the seeds for success. That’s a far-reaching example of what’s right with our schools.
Heather Campbell is the sponsor for the Future Business Leaders for America at Ridgeland.
She explains, “Future Business Leaders of America is a career student technical organization that the state of Georgia has put into place in all of our CTAE curriculums.”
Sophomore Allisyn Johnson says, “FBLA is a CTSO organization that prepares students for life beyond high school, and I think that that was just the path that I was looking for when I was choosing one. Since there are so many at Ridgeland.”
Heather Campbell says, ” We have different pathways. Ours is the business administration pathway, with emphasis is entrepreneurship.”
Senior Emerson Crutcher says, ” This organization helps me learn soft skills that are good for job environments, things that just can help you in everyday life, like how to make a resume, how to do all these things that are very helpful in day-to-day life.”
Heather Campbell says,” FPLA is woven through our assignments, through our everyday curriculum. We stress employability skills heavily, and FPLA is a great way for these kids to work on their soft skills, work on their interpersonal skills, their speaking skills.”
Senior Celia Davenport says, ” We’ve always gone to like, we’ve done the region competitions and we’ve had a few people that have placed and gotten a few medals, but it’s never been really big. So, like this year, especially for FBLA, we had 27 different people that took tests, and 24 of those 27 people actually placed, and several of them were first place. And then overall, Ridgeland as a whole.”
Heather Campbell explains, “We were third in the sweepstakes in region eight, which is a very big deal for not just FBLA, but for Ridgeland as a whole. We had over 58% of our organization compete against some of the larger organizations, so I was very proud of our numbers. A lot of these kids that competed this year have never competed before, and it was a little outside of their comfort zone. So FPLA offers the opportunities for these kids to push themselves just a little bit.”
Senior Melanie Quintanilla says, “I learned that I can overcome my fear of talking in front of people. I became an officer this year, and I never thought I’d be able to be an officer because of how shy I was, but here I am.”
Heather Campbell concludes,” So, FPLA does a great job putting real world situations into roleplay to where they’ll be prepared for their business careers later. My goal is for them to grow while they’re here and to make partnerships, networking skills.”
