JAKE'S PORTFOLIO
Here at the Dayton Regional STEM School, we have five important qualities. Collaboration, creativity, persistence, communication, and inquiry. All of these are necessary to be a successful student. While I use these academically on a day-to-day basis, I believe that I have grown the most in communication during my 11th grade year. Communication is the ability to work with students and teachers to reach an ultimate goal. Specifically, my economics class helped me improve my communication skills tremendously.
An example of a project I did that helped me improve my communication skills is the drink company project. For this economics project, I was in a group with three other people. The goal of the project was to create a drink company that could provide the underclassman with the best drink option. In the beginning, we had to each take on a role in the business. There was a CEO, marketing manager, production manager, and human resource manager. I was the resource manager. As the resource manager, I had to communicate to the group how we could more effectively work together, problems we had between members of the group, and complaints about different issues. Throughout the whole project our group had to communicate to make sure we got everything done. For example, we always checked up on each other’s progress to make sure we were getting our parts done. Our final PowerPoint is a perfect example. For our final PowerPoint, we had to combine everyone’s work to show how we set up our business. A lot of information was put into this PowerPoint, requiring a lot of time to put it together. As a group, we communicated to make sure everyone knew what they needed to do and so we could make sure everyone got their work done.
Another example of how I was able to practice and improve my communication skills is the Stock Market Challenge. For this challenge, we were put into the same groups as the drink companies. We were given a client to represent in the stock markets. Starting with two million dollars, our client wanted her money double by the end of the project. As a group, we had to communicate a lot to make sure we were successful. All group members had to be aware of what we were investing in, how we were performing, and who was doing what to help contribute to the final project. For example, I had to give my group member all of our weekly results so that she could put it in our final presentation. We also had to practice professional communication skills with our client. Every week I had to write a professional email to our client, showing what we have invested in, how much money we made, and how we were moving on with new trades. We also had to communicate with her in person. We held meetings so that we could really make sure she knew what we were doing with her money at all times.
Communication is an important quality for the real world. No matter what career field you go into, you’ll have to communicate with co-workers, managers, and others outside the business. The more effective you can communicate, the more you will succeed.