A new Marketing Communications course will be available for the first time at Carlmont in the next 2019–2020 school year.
Carlmont will be the first in the Sequoia Union High School District (SUHSD) to offer the class, which is the second course in the marketing Career Technical Education pathway, which follows California state standards for CTE. The pathway’s first course, Introduction to Business, was introduced this year at Carlmont and the high school district for the first time.
A majority of seniors and juniors and some sophomores make up the 120 students currently in Intro to Business, of which about 25 have registered for next year’s marketing class, which requires Intro to Business as a prerequisite.
The courses, articulated with Canada College and College of San Mateo, allow students to earn transferable college credits.
Students will learn topics such as branding, promotion, pricing, sales, and customer service in marketing, going more in depth from the various finance and business topics taught in Intro to Business.
Carlmont Intro to Business teacher John Rowe volunteered to teach Marketing Communications next year.
“I have a passion for marketing and teaching. I really enjoy teaching real-world skills to students and drawing upon my experience to try to create the most realistic class assignments possible,” Rowe, who worked in marketing for 10 years, said.
Rowe plans to work with local businesses to introduce projects where students can effectively test their own marketing work in the real world.
“We’ll have projects that will be simulating as close to the real world as possible or literally real-world projects,” Rowe said. “It helps students learn things they can apply in their everyday life. It keeps the students interested. If students are working on projects that have a real-world context, they will be more invested in learning the material.”
Rowe believes CTE pathways at the high school level are invaluable and a “positive direction for the future of our students.”
“Students will begin to develop passions for different career opportunities earlier that will help them find their path in life. I would strongly recommend students take a chance on some of these pathways to see if they are interested in that career,” Rowe said.
This Marketing CTE pathway is one of the numerous programs Carlmont and the SUHSD have been developing and adding to course listings in recent years, as schools across the nation push for more offerings in dual enrollment courses.
Students at Carlmont involved with business student organizations DECA and FBLA were required to take business CTE courses.
“I took the class largely because I wanted to continue in DECA. But I also knew that the course was being created by Mr. Rowe, who has plenty of business knowledge,” Liam Dowling, a sophomore DECA member, said. “The class is engaging overall, but sometimes I feel the choice of material could be improved.”
Dowling does not plan to advance to next year’s Marketing Communications course next year.
One Carlmont junior who does is Sadie Somers, who intends to take Intro to Business over the summer to fulfill the prerequisite.
“I’m really interested in marketing and advertising, to understand people and how to sell to them,” Somers said. “I feel like taking this class will help me understand better what I really want to do in college and later in life.”
If enough students express interest in the pathway, Rowe hopes to open a third entrepreneurship course in the following 2020–2021 school year.
