Sunday, May 31, 2009
By Harold Gwin
You could get fired, but you still had a chance to come back and compete.
YOUNGSTOWN — They had to write and perform public service announcements; write, produce and act in a television commercial; create and market a new Dairy Queen Blizzard flavor and more.
It was all part of a game closely modeled after “The Apprentice” television program developed by Donald Trump.
The big difference is that, if you got fired in the Youngstown Christian School version of the game, you still got to come back and participate.
Michael Breidenstein — Mr. B to his students — said he devised the game for his senior computer business class after seeing the first season of the Trump television program. He’s been team teaching it with Becky Marks for the past six years.
“I had to do something to get their attention,” he said, explaining that other teachers had warned him that seniors are a tough group to teach in the second half of their final year. It’s gone very well and has proven to be popular with senior students, he added.
The school version is also called The Apprentice, he said, and it’s the focal part of the curriculum in the second half of the school year.
There are 19 students in the program this year and the school year started with the class viewing the entire first season of the television show so they get an understanding of how the competition works, Breidenstein said.
Like the television show, it’s very project-oriented, he said, with competing teams of students assigned to complete a variety of “real” tasks. A different team member is selected as the project manager for each task.
At the completion of each of the projects, the group has a “boardroom” meeting in the high school conference room where performances are examined, winners are named and losers “fired,” although they get to continue in the competition.
The first project was writing a public service announcement for the Tom Holden Memorial Scholarship program.
The second was to create a complete itinerary for the class trip to New York City where the top 10 performers in the game get to meet with and be interviewed by executives of Rochdale & Associates, an investment firm.
Later projects included marketing selected products on eBay; creating, writing and performing a public service announcement for the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program (The top local effort was selected by DARE to be part of a national campaign); writing and producing a television commercial for the Kids Act II consignment store; creating and marketing a new Blizzard flavor at the Cornersburg Dairy Queen; and marketing Christian-themed T-shirts in the school.
The highlight of the competition was the trip to New York City last week where only the top 10 in the class got to participate in the Rochdale & Associates interviews, Breidenstein said.
The students were grilled by a panel of company executives on their business sense, leadership style and skills, their performance in the game and even their handshake.
The executives picked three people out of the 10 who became the finalists in the competition.
Breidenstein and Marks will pick the winner from those three, based on their performance during the school year.
“We had a really good group this year,” Marks said, adding that there were “some surprises” along the way.
The winner, who will be announced during the all-school awards ceremony next week, gets a notebook computer. Others get trophies.
Jordyn Robinson of New Castle, Pa., Rolando Rojas of Youngstown and Matt Teleha of Boardman are this year’s finalists.
All three said they’d heard a lot about the class and how much fun it was from previous seniors.
“It’s worked out better than expected,” said Robinson, noting that she plans to study business in college and the experience has been very beneficial. It was also more intense than she anticipated, she said.
“It was a lot of work, and it took up a lot of time, but it was worth it,” offered Teleha. “We definitely learned a lot.”
It was an honor just to be picked among the final three, Rojas said, adding, “We worked really hard.”
All three said they had fun on the New York trip, although Robinson admitted that, “Some of us were stressed out.”
“First impressions are everything,” she explained.
“I just told myself I would do the best I could,” Teleha said.
You had to keep winning in mind, but you couldn’t dwell on it, Rojas said. The bottom line was to do the best you can, he said.
The three plan to carry that message with them as they continue to pursue their education.
Robinson plans to major in business and education at Slippery Rock University, Rojas plans to major in communications at Kent State University and Teleha intends to major in communications at Mercyhurst College.
gwin@vindy.com