Enrolling in “Summer School”

Here we are! Finally near the end of a school year that was both fabulous and stressful. This post-COVID-lockdown year brought tremendous problems, particularly related to students’ abilities to reacclimate to a school room setting. Additionally, it highlighted numerous mental health issues that prevented some students from doing their absolute best. It was a tough year for adults and kids alike. Let’s do some voluntary CTSO summer training!

Hopefully, none of your CTSO students are in the position to need summer school for credit retrieval. If they absolutely must attend summer school, that is unfortunate. It is also not what I am advocating for in this edition of the blog. What we are looking for are ways to continue to promote your CTSO throughout the summer. This to both prepare your organization, and to prepare for competitive success. 

On Campus CTSO Summer Training

In fabulous southern Nevada, school is over just before Memorial Day. Summer school goes through the month of June, but during July, all campuses are closed. Therefore, my school building will be open, air conditioned and usable through June this year. So…let’s use it!!! 

While I am not on the payroll, my classroom—and all of my supplies—are available for us to use next month. I have created a very loose schedule for the first week of June for my CTSO officers to use my classroom. This will give us an opportunity to do a number of things in a relaxed environment with limited deadlines. 

CTSO Competition Prep

We will be meeting to continue our preparations for the FBLA National Conference at the end of June. All of our strategies were highlighted in previous blogs, and I encourage you to read and use them. This is the pinnacle of CTSO summer training for most competitors. We can use the stage in my classroom to practice presentations and impromptu speeches.

Membership Drive

We have an event before school in August for incoming freshmen—I’m sure your school does, as well. At that event, we will have a booth to tell new students about our CTSO, and encourage them to become members. This event doesn’t just plan itself, so we use June to prepare our materials and decorate our booth. They are going with a tropical theme this year, so they can create the decorations, make a flyer about our first meeting, and create a brochure for students and parents to take with them. All of the necessary supplies are at school, and their excitement for this event is still quite high, so June is absolutely the best time to get prepared.

Program Of Work

The newly installed officer team is responsible for creating their Program of Work to be shared with the members at the opening meeting in August. They have a lot of work to do to coalesce as a group and draw up their responsibilities and what they hope to accomplish. This process takes quite a bit of time, because it is important that everyone participate and present what they feel should be our priorities. 

Social Hour

Even though this is listed last, it is absolutely the first and most important part of opening my classroom during the summer. This team has a lot of work to do next year, and the work will go more quickly and smoothly if they are a cohesive, functioning team. In order for that to happen, they need to get to know each other personally, and develop friendships with each other that are centered in their passion for our CTSO. 

Off Campus CTSO Summer Training

Building off of the last bullet point, we need to help our new leadership team build the relationships that will guide them through the troubles and successes of next year. We do that by planning several events during the summer off campus. We discussed this in the previous blog about preparing for National competition, and I encourage you to revisit it. 

For this summer, my new team has bowling on the schedule, in addition to a picnic in a local park. These are very loose and relaxed events, with very limited “work” getting done. As the adviser, I will make an appearance at these events, but will not be at the beginning or the end of any off campus events. I need for the team to start to navigate things on their own, without being able to look to me for guidance. So, I will drop by the picnic with some cookies for dessert, and will stop by the bowling alley to watch a frame or two. But I do not stay—these events are not for me. 

The Internet Doesn’t Close

This is a great little detail that you might want to remind your students. They seem to remember that YouTube and their favorite gaming sites are always open, but forget the same is true of useful sites they can access to prepare for next year! 

With the new officers installed, control of all of our social media sites has also been transferred. Why should they be silent over the summer? Make sure your new social media officer (of whatever titles you happen to have) remains active over the summer. You won’t be able to hit the incoming freshmen, but it is important that our existing older members be kept abreast of what is happening, and the plans that are being made for August. It is an easy and quick way for all of your members to remain engaged with the organization even while not at school. 

While this year my officers chose Slack as their social messaging site, your team might choose Remind or Discord to keep in touch over the summer and during the school year. No matter what they choose, make sure they are being active on it from wherever they travel this summer. Maintaining those new, fragile relationships will pay tremendous benefits for your organization next year.

Competitive Events Summer Training

As mentioned, some of the CTSOs have their national conferences during the summer!

These late-date conferences give us a great opportunity for students to plan and practice and be at their best in the summer months when they are competing. As I’ve documented in this and other blogs, I do devote time outside of school to ensure and encourage success for my students. I never ask more from students than what I would do myself—and during the summer I put my money where my (very big) mouth is. It shows my team my level of dedication, and my faith in their ability to succeed on the national stage. So we use the time outside of school before the national conference to prepare as much as we possibly can. We practice presentations, we look up vocabulary, we do games and activities to try to make the learning more fun. We work.

But…in reality…continuity is my primary objective. I feel it is my responsibility to ensure the continuity and success of my organizations. I use summer to further accomplish this goal.

Start competitive events for next year. During the summer.

Speaking for FBLA…

Next year’s prompts and scenarios are released at the national conference. So, theoretically, my students can start their business plans and presentations in July of this year.

I strongly encourage all of my students to take advantage of this “down time” in the summer to prepare for next year’s competition. We can’t do much about performance events that are impromptu, but we absolutely can build a plan for a prepared event. By sharing the prompts with my students, it gives them the opportunity to work towards next year’s competitive events now, when they have no other scholastic pressures, and have nothing but time on their hands to research the business ethics, or prepare the Introduction to Business Presentation slides. I once had a team of students complete their entire Business Financial Plan over the summer. All they had to do the following school year was update it and tweak some of the research they did, but, ultimately, they were done. THEY ALSO WON. 

You absolutely need a certain type of student to make this work, but it is something I bring up to all of my members every single year, in case they want to complete something important and viable during their down time. 

Accountability For CTSO Summer Training

It is their summer. Heck, it’s my summer! I don’t want to have a ton of accountability plans or responsibilities that have to be completed. You need to keep it light and fun for the students to buy in and be engaged in your activities. 

But they need to know what benefits they can derive from participating. 

During our June meetings in my classroom, we talk extensively about planning out the first month of meetings, so we can start strong. We can’t afford to start slow in August, or else nothing will get done until October. My officers are tasked with being prepared a month in advance, so they need to have August fully planned before July 1. Once they scatter for the summer, they can use live meeting software like Zoom or Google meets to get together over the summer to make sure all of the work is done. They use the June dates to delegate responsibilities to each officer, and can then check in to make sure things are working smoothly.

Value Added Proposition

I’m absolutely advocating that you use part of your summer in the service of your students. You already are devoting a week of your precious time to attend a national CTSO conference, and I’m asking for more?

Yup.

Only if you feel it will be worth it. 

In my considerable experience, any time you devote to students outside of your regular duties as their educator pays you back multiple times over. Even if you don’t produce national winners, you are reinforcing to students that you think they are “worth it”, that you respect them and believe them to be valuable young people in their own right. You are building relationships—and building self-esteem—that will carry them far into the future. 

The fact that you will have more successful and better prepared competitors is just a bonus. The concept of having meetings planned months in advance, with activities and membership drives already constructed, is just icing on the cake.

You are building humans.

And that is the highest calling we have as Advisers.

THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FAR

Wow, thank you for reading about voluntary CTSO summer training!

Hey, since you’re here! You may as well check out how to properly prepare for a national conference, here, and how to prepare for next year, here! Check out our other topics here! Either way, I appreciate you!

Please leave a COMMENT about any tips you may have!! Or comment what your favorite tip of mine was! How’s your student organization operating? Let me know.

Feel free to contact me or leave a COMMENT with anything you would like to hear more about! Or reach out with any unrelated questions, comments, concerns, or random outbursts of excitement by clicking here.