Intro to Business teaches lessons through simulated examples

Photo by Florence Wei

Students roam around freely during business class as they work on assignments with each other on Nov 21.

Introduction to Business, taught by Kirk Davis, was first introduced to the school 17 years ago when Davis began teaching here. Before becoming a teacher, he completed degrees in engineering and business, worked with a consulting firm and spent 25 years in the healthcare industry. 

However, in 2009, the class was discontinued due to an increased demand for science teachers and the lower demand for the business class after the introduction of the choice to take two science classes for juniors. 

The class was restarted three years ago when a group of students petitioned to return it and has been offered every year since.

Davis teaches two periods of the class this year available only to juniors and seniors.

The curriculum focuses on familiarizing students with the business industry by introducing topics like company functions, investments and personal finance.

In the first semester, the class covered topics within microeconomics and macroeconomics such as supply and demand, interest rates and Federal Reserve functions. To interactively practice the concepts they learn, students play a stock market game throughout the year, where they trade and invest with a starter amount of $100,000 in simulated accounts.

Davis also occasionally brings in speakers from industry to talk to the class about real-world applications of topics they learn in class.

For instance, Davis brought in the district’s director of human resources for the district, Dagmar Derickson, in early October to talk about the human resources function and her role, Brian Penzel, a consultant for JPMorgan Chase about investing, in late October and Greg Henderson, a small business CEO who owns Cilker-Henderson Properties, about how he got into it in early December.

Davis said as the business industry has evolved over the last 20 years, the Introduction to Business class has also. 

“Banking is very different now than 20 years ago,” Davis said. “I don’t know how many checks [students] are going to [need to] write. I will probably still teach [students] how to do that. Payments and job search now are all in all electronic databases so that’s changed.”

Kinnera Potluri, a junior taking the class, said she took it because she plans to become a business major in college.

She feels the class helps people who are new to business develop a basic understanding of the subject. Topics regarding the stock market were particularly interesting to learn, she said. As for the workload, there is typically little to no homework, but studying is still important since tests are frequent.

The hardest part of the class, according to Davis, is learning the basics of accounting, which is a challenging field full of rules and filled with vagaries, making it difficult to understand and apply. “We’ll learn some accounting, which is not easy for kids. But then, at the end of the year, I give them a very sophisticated spreadsheet, so they can make all their financial statements,” Davis said. “They won’t fully understand and I get that, but I take them through what assumptions they need to make and put in.”

At the end of the year, for their final project, the students will put together a business plan for any product they want. They will apply the methods they learned, such as marketing materials and sales approaches, and present them to the class.

“The idea of the class is to give kids full exposure to the business world, ranging from all the functions of the company to the perspective of a CEO and all the different things you can do and what’s involved in all that,” Davis said.