Woodhaven High School offers a large variety of classes to suit every student. One of the most popular classes at Woodhaven that students will generally choose from is any of the business-related DCTC courses. These classes range from Marketing 1, Marketing 2, Advanced Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Personal Finance, Accounting, and Business Management and Technology. Joining any of these classes also allows students to join DECA at Woodhaven.
In the Marketing 1 classes, students are introduced to the basic marketing concepts. Students learn what promotion is and how to advertise properly, they are introduced to the target market and to advertise their products to and how to determine their target market, pricing products, and determine the costs, etc. Students are also introduced to professional dress and what to wear and what not to wear. Additionally, in Marketing 1, students are taught about interviews, what to expect, and what to say. This class is super beneficial for these students because they are at the age where they are getting their first jobs and going into an interview completely unaware of what to expect. In Marketing 1, students are introduced to resumes and how to put them together. Students make resumes and cover all the different categories of the resume and what to put down. Students will also do a practice interview in this class where they will be applying for an entry-level position and have to dress professionally and use their resume. Emily Duford, a senior who took this class says “Marketing 1 helped me a lot with my public speaking and marketing skills. Practicing the interviews helped me get more comfortable with speaking clearly and keeping eye contact. These have helped me in interviews I’ve had outside of school and for my roleplays for DECA.”
In the Marketing 2 class, students now use the skills they learned in Marketing 1 for real-world scenarios. In this class, a few more projects are using those skills, and students in Marketing 2 are also allowed to participate in the written event category for DECA. They learn how to expand on the terms they learned in Marketing 1, so look more into how they would promote, why they promote, and who to promote to, etc.
In Advanced Marketing, students will primarily focus on learning how to run the school store ‘The Warrior Trade’. In this class, students will learn how to use the school store POS system and learn about the merchandise the store carries. Students are assigned a day to work in the school usually 1-2 days a week, either cashing people out, helping heat press new items, or walking around during lunches to sell snacks to students or new items in the store. In this class, students also focus heavily on DECA projects.
Entrepreneurship is one of the few business classes available to grades 9-12. In this class, students learn all of the aspects of owning and running a business. Students learn what different business owners will encounter and what they do in their day-to-day jobs. Students during the year will have numerous projects where they make up their own business and will figure out how they plan on running it successfully. Students also do online simulations throughout the year and they will run the business itself to pass the simulation. Duford says, “ This class was really helpful for me because one day I do plan on owning my own business, a dance studio. So it was really good to kinda get a look at some of the things I would see one day and get familiar with it pretty early on.”
Accounting is another class open for 9-12 grade. In this class, students will learn the basics of accounting. Students learn what accounting is, the accounting equation, debits and credits, t-accounts, and how to journal transactions. This course is super helpful to students who plan on going to college for any type of business/marketing degree because you will have to take an accounting class, so this is a good introduction to students so they know what to expect.
Personal Finance is a very important class to take, and this class will now be required for students to take starting with the class of 2028. This class teaches students about savings and checking accounts, how to save and manage their money, how to invest, how to pay for college, how loans work, etc. When students graduate high school they go into the world blind on everything finance, so this class gives them information on things they wouldn’t usually know about.
Business Management and Technology is a new class offered at Woodhaven High School this school year and is open to grades 9-12. This class is focused on how businesses handle issues and learn about different roles in the business world. Students will learn about a few jobs in the business world, like jobs that deal with hiring and evaluating employees and what their jobs contain.
