DECA students encourage others to get college and career ready

Kara Graham, Associate Editor • March 19, 2024

Salma Kamal presents her project entitled “The Roots” to the Exploring Career class

When walking into an interview high school students are told to prepare and to “show your skills.” What does that look like? How can high school students start preparing for their future? Second-year DECA students, Salma Kamal, Edward Itzep, and Alex Canseco seek to rectify that problem in their DECA project entitled The Roots.

“Our project is promoting resumes and college career readiness. To promote that we decided to conduct multiple surveys, presentations, and interviews,” Canseco said.

The hopes for this project extend beyond a trophy and the chance to go to California.

“I would say that will they learn how to build resumes that would prepare them for college. [How to do] interviews and careers. [And be] a stepping stone in life,” Itzep said.

The students were inspired by classes already taught at Tupelo High School and wanted to branch out on the topics taught in those classes.

“We wanted to create a little platform or something that college and career readiness classes already do, but really emphasize on it and really teach from student to student on how to become career ready,” Kamal said.

This project took months of preparation, dedication, and research to better help students understand the importance of getting career-ready.

Students competed at the State Career Development Conference (SCDC) in late February. Tupelo DECA had twenty-seven students qualify for international competition in Anaheim California this April

“September [is when] we started brainstorming. Figuring out what we needed to do or if we wanted to do a workshop. We originally presented to about 150 students,” Kamal said.

The students sought to make the project interactive and took advice from fellow students.

“During our surveys, we got positive feedback. We got also negative feedback to improve but nothing we didn’t fix. We also created brochures and a flyer or sir survey that allows students to turn in their resume and let me grade it,” Kamal said.

The students went to the State Career Development Conference (SCDC) in Vicksburg, Mississippi on February 26-28. The students earned first place and will be competing at the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) in Anaheim California this April.

“I was very happy and a little shocked, we put in a lot of work and effort into our project. And I was very glad and happy with the results that we received” Kamal said.

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About the Contributor

Kara Graham, Associate Editor

Kara Graham is an editor for Wave Media. She has always had a passion for writing and often writes poems and reads in her spare time. She is the recipient of the MSPA Best of Show Lede, MSPA Best of Mississippi Feature Writing/Reporting, and MSPA Best of Mississippi Depth Reporting Winner. She is also an MSPA All-Mississippi Honoree. She had one of her articles published on the Best of SNO website. She is president of the journalism honor society Quill & Scroll. She participated in a virtual newsroom called Headliners of Summer where she was joined by writers from 16 states and 4 countries to write stories of local and national interest. You can access more of her work on the Headliners of Summer website. She hopes to major in journalism at the University of Mississippi. This is her second year writing for Wave Media