Celebrating Career and Technical Education during CTE Month.

Part 2 of 4 - Fantasy Football Marketing

One of the many challenges of teaching is to find ways of teaching the course standards in a way that interests students and covers the appropriate content.   In fact, teachers are evaluated on their ability to do this.  Standard 1.2 and 1.3 of the OCS Teacher Evaluation Program state, “Activates learners’ prior knowledge, experience, and interests and uses this information.” and “Connects curriculum to other content areas and real-life settings to promote retention and relevance.”  It takes a lot of time and effort to create plans that not only meet the course standards, but get students excited about learning.

Mandi Edwards, OHS Marketing teacher, found a way to do just that through Fantasy Football.  During the Fall semester Mrs. Edwards’ students were assigned a project that would require them to apply many different aspects of marketing in a way that most of her students would enjoy and learn from.  Students were allowed to create a mock Fantasy Football team and track their player’s points throughout the semester.  However, this was only the hook to get them to engage in the marketing content that Mrs. Edwards’ was required to teach.  As these students learned about the different aspects of marketing, they took what they learned and applied it to their Fantasy Football team.  The assignment required students to choose a location for their team and do research on that location.  Looking at demographics, competition in the area, and possible corporate sponsors they had to justify their team’s location.  Then students had to select a team name and tie it to the history of their chosen location.  Once this was done, students designed logos, uniforms, and other merchandise.  They also looked at associated costs, pricing, and profit for their teams.  The last piece of the project was for students to create a variety of promotional and business materials that would help them market their team in their city and throughout the country.

It is experiences like these that will help our students make the connections between what is being taught and what is happening in life outside of school.  The great news is that they do not just happen in Mrs. Edwards’ Marketing classes, they happen every day in multiple classrooms throughout the Opelika City Schools.