Career Education Feature
$7,500 prize for innovative program
Missouri Marketing Teacher Receives
2008 Leavey Award for Excellence
in Private Enterprise Education
 |
Cindy Shannon |
Cindy Shannon, marketing education coordinator and DECA advisor at Parkview High School in Springfield, Mo. has been selected a 2008 recipient of the $7,500 Leavey Award for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education.
The award is sponsored by the Freedoms Foundation, whose award program puts an emphasis on recognizing educators who teach the private enterprise system.
Shannon's project, "Cookies Gone Crazy," details the success of her marketing education program as a relevant, meaningful experience for her students. Shannon's program integrates interactive classroom instruction, work-based experiences, and DECA, the student organization for marketing, management and entrepreneurship. Shannon developed a cookie-baking, school-based enterprise as a means of helping students make connections between textbook concepts and realistic marketing strategies.
Celebrating its 31st year, this special recognition program, endowed by the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation, permits Freedoms Foundation to honor educators for their innovative efforts to help young people better understand the function and benefits of America's private enterprise system. Each year, an independent panel may select up to 20 awards, and this year they selected nine projects.
"My intent was to create a 'laboratory setting' to apply the key concepts I would be teaching — to bring the information from the text into the real world; to bring excitement and relevance to their learning," Shannon explained in her project. "I have been teaching for 25 years, and I have learned that without the "why," learning is simply seat time and worksheets for 11th and 12th graders."
The school-based enterprise, which started with cookies, now features school apparel. This allows students to practice concepts, including production, food safety, inventory management, spoilage, profit and loss, supply and demand, pricing strategies, finance, promotion, and the daily demands of operating a business.
The profits from the enterprise provide funding for participation in DECA, which allows marketing students to utilize their knowledge and skills developed as they compete in its flagship competitive events program. Evaluated against industry competencies by industry representatives, Parkview DECA had nearly 20 students qualify for the State Career Development Conference (CDC) and had five international finalists at the 2007 DECA International CDC.
Shannon's students have also reached to lower grade levels to help increase entrepreneurship education. Through "Thinking Like An Entrepreneur," marketing students work with students in elementary and middle school grades to develop a business through a hands-on project. Shanon's students entered this project in DECA's Entrepreneurship Promotion Plan, where the team presented during International CDC finals.
While Shannon may have won the $7,500 award, she says her students are the real winners.
"The students involved in these various innovative projects not only have earned necessary revenue for our program, but have gained an understanding of the vital role of the American private enterprise system," she said in her project. "I have watched as these students evolve from a 'me' view of coming to class to do seat time, to a 'we' view of making a profit and a renewed love for learning."
Freedoms Foundation will host a special awards ceremony in Valley Forge, Penn., on March 6-9 to formally recognize Shannon for her accomplishments with a commemorative plaque. The weekend will also include the Leavey Educational Summit, where Shannon will present her project to fellow recipients and area educators.
Congratulations, Cindy Shannon!