Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
STAFF WRITER
The Dora High School Business Professionals of America’s Parliamentary Procedure Team received second place at the state competition in Albuquerque last week.
According to the school’s BPA sponsor Debbie Smith, the team “goes in front of the judges, they (the judges) hand them situations that they would go over in a business meeting, they give them so many minutes to prepare, and then they (the students) take that information and go in front of the judges and run a meeting based upon the information the judges gave them.”
The purpose of the organization is to teach students leadership skills as well as give them an opportunity to “experience real life events by competing,” Smith said.
According to Smith, the Parliamentary Procedure Team consists of six of the nine students who attended state. Some of those six, she said, also competed individually in other events.
There are hundreds of subjects in which students can compete, said Smith, including everything from programming to legal office procedures.
When team member Shania Ramirez, 16, joined BPA, she hoped to learn business skills that would help her with jobs in the future. She, along with the rest of her team, were both “excited and nervous” about competing at the state level.
Smith said that, though they may have been nervous, the students had sufficiently prepared themselves for the competition.
“Most of them handled it pretty well,” she said, “because we had a regional competition in December in Melrose, and so, in order for them to make it to state, they had to qualify at regionals.”
16-year-old Gema Villanueva wanted to learn how to become a leader when she joined BPA, and since she joined, the organization has helped her to become more outgoing, “because I’m usually a shy person around people that I don’t know.”
Charlyn Simpson, 17, said, “I was pretty confident in my team. I knew that we were going to do pretty good. I’ve learned to be more confident in myself and to be more outgoing.”
