Heritage Hills High School business program | Spencer County News

LINCOLN CITY — Jessica Griepenstroh, a Heritage Hills High School business department teacher gave a presentation on the Business Career Technical Education Pathway. This presentation was during the North Spencer School Board meeting held on Monday, April 25.

The presentation detailed what the students have been working on in the different business pathway courses throughout the school year.

First, Griepenstroh gave a short background on her career in accounting and office management before she obtained her transition teaching certification and license.

She is a graduate of Heritage Hills, and business was one of her favorite courses she took at the school.

Griepenstroh then went over the courses they are offering to students this year. One course is the work-based learning course. The course work for the students is done in a virtual format that works alongside the students in-person on-the-job training.

This course is done alongside Brenda Allen, the coordinator for the on-the-job training. A lot of the curriculum done within the virtual course is focused on setting goals and self-assessments. A majority of the student in this course are seniors, and the self-assessments focus on five or 10 year plans.

In this course, students also focus on in-depth career research, in the industries that they are showing interest in. This research highlights education requirements, required skills, and salary expectations for the career they are interested in. The students will also complete job searches, and projects that focus on potential careers. They discuss employee and employer expectations and work place communication.

Figuring compensations and learning how to read through pay-stubs to ensure all earnings are being reported accurately is another aspect of the course.

The students complete a project at the end of the course that focuses on budget planning.

Students will find and entry level position and research the salary, the cost of rent or a mortgage payment in the location they want to live, and expected utilities. Students will work to figure out budget expenses and potential income to figure out how they are going to survive on their own in the future. This project is done to better prepare students when they do reach this step in life.

Intro to Business was offered as a new course the previous school year. This semester-long course is an entry into the business world.

Griepenstroh explained this course is split up into seven different units. The units focus on business and economics basics. Such as, satisfying needs and wants of the consumer. They talk about entrepreneurship, marketing and advertising.

The students are wrapping up unit six, which focuses on communication and leadership skills. The last unit is on ethics and the social responsibilities of business.

There is a lot of research in this course, and students are given the ability to choose the different topics they focus on and present to their peers.

One project done at the beginning of the Intro to Business course is a “your brand” project. Since a lot of people associates business with logos, the students provide logos of businesses to answer certain questions which helps students to get to know each other.

For one project, the students create a commercial to learn different persuasive techniques in advertising.

A required course for incoming freshman or transfer students is Preparing for College and Careers. In this course, there were 49 students in the fall enrolled, and 49 students in the spring.

In PCC students go through the basics of money management. They also do a checking account unit on how to write out checks, deposit slips, and fill out a check register.

In PCC, they do a lot of self-assessments to highlight students skills, interests, and values. This leads into a discussion of career exploration.

Students will also learn how to fill out job applications and how to create a resume and cover letter. The students are preparing for their mock interviews in a couple of weeks.

There is also the Accounting course. This is a concentrated course within the business program. The course size averages between 10 to 12 students each year.

To start off unit one of the accounting course, they focus on sole proprietorship service business. They run through the entire accounting cycle for this kind of business.

This is a very progressive course. The groundwork for this course is done on pencil and paper. As the students get more comfortable, they use a program called Cengage, a spreadsheet application that is more engaging than paper and pencil.

For unit two in accounting, they focus on a merchandising corporation. Students start learning about merchandising, sales, returns and allowances. They talk about the different ledgers used in this style of business.

Right now, students are creating a payroll register for a list of employees within their corporation. They are also figuring how to create W-2s and W-3s for the company and employees.

The Principles of Business Management course is another concentrated course within the program. There is currently 22 students enrolled in the year one class.

This year, this course was project focused. Students talk about economic decisions and their outcomes. Social responsibility of businesses, more in-depth discussions of entrepreneurship, workplace culture, and human resources are all topics that are discussed in this course.

Students work together on a city collaboration project. At the beginning of the year, students select a business of their choosing and create vision boards to picture the interior, exterior and inspirations for that business.

Students will create their business in 3-D form to then physically create a town of all of their business. They will also create an ideal customer avatar for their business. A business plan and strategy will also be created by students to be placed in their own portfolio.

Griepenstroh also went over how the Business CTE Pathway will look for next school year.

Principles of Business Management will now be looked at as the introductory course. The concentrated course will be Introduction to Accounting. They are also going to bring back the Principles of Marketing course. A new course they are going to introduce will be Digital Marketing. The Work Based Learning course will still be offered, but the cooperative aspect for the students will now be done within the classroom.

Griepenstroh also highlighted the Business Professionals of America students. Students competed at Ivy Tech in Evansville in finance, business administration, management information systems, and more.

Five students went to Indianapolis for the state level conference this year.

On May 4, Two senior students, Kyle Eubank and Nathan Windell will be leaving for Dallas, Tx. to compete at the National level in Diagnostic Medical Coding and Python Programming.