Distributive Education was the class that my Mom taught. Just as I was forced to go through all 12 years of regular grade school so that I could increase the district's average on the standardized tests, Mom wanted me to take her class so that I would increase the level of performance among her students.
I had been warned before by my friend Rod that the subject of the class was very boring. Rod would say that my Mom was a good teacher, but he wasn't really interested in the subject.
I tried everything to get out of the class. When I went to register for my courses, and we had to visit each teacher to register, I went to my Mom's table last in hopes that her 2nd period class would fill up. That just did not happen.
The class basically seemed to be about how to work and do your job. It also covered concepts like profit margins and marketing. But the class was only part of it. The other part was the jobs that we worked outside of school. I found out later that we got graded by our employers and that would impact our GPA. No one, NOT EVEN MY MOM, told me about this beforehand.
Fortune fell upon me early in the semester. The Distributive Education classes were the backbone of Artesia High School's chapter of the Distributive Education Clubs of America, or DECA. Our DECA chapter was going to work on a project to enter into the state competition. We decided to do the "Free Enterprise" project. My mom had selected a couple of girls from the second period class to head it up. I guess they told her they would need someone else on the project and Mom probably volunteered me. They agreed.
With us working on the project, we didn't have to take part in the learning part of the class. We would tell her we were going to run errands associated with the project. Actually, we just drove around for an hour and got fast food. We would do some actual work from time to time, but that maybe took up to one hour each week. My mother never questioned our whereabouts.
So, how did our project work out in the state competition? We came in first place. Please note that there probably weren't more than five other schools in the state that picked this as their chapter project.
Even though we didn't have to actually learn anything in class because we were working on the project, we did have to compete in the individual competitions for our region and state. The girl who headed up the project didn't have to do it, but the other girl and I had to. Mom ran me through a crash course to prepare for the test. Both the other girl and I came in first place in our region. That meant we got to go to the state competition in the individual categories.
In fact, in the regional competition, which included other towns like Carlsbad, Hobbs and Lovington, there were 36 slots for students to go to the state competition. Our DECA chapter got 18 of those slots.
I did not win at state because two parts of the competition involved role-playing interaction with judges. My category was in clothing retail. In one scenario, I was supposed to handle an alleged shoplifter who sets off the alarm. When I was reading the scenario, it said that the contestant was not supposed to know that the judge had not stolen the merchandise. I realized I was not supposed to see that, quickly closed the folder and looked for the folder I was supposed to read. When we started, I thought an actual alarm was supposed to go off. It didn't. No one explained that I was supposed to pretend it went off. So I quickly talked to the judge, and she said that she had bought the merchandise from one of our employees. I asked her which one. She pointed at an invisible person behind the counter. This was really no help. I had a one-sided conversation with thin air and verified that the judge had indeed purchased the merchandise. I apologized to the judge and that was it.
The next role-playing situation was to sell the judge something in a men's clothing store. Even though I worked in a clothing store, I was not a salesperson. I was a janitor. We go through this whole process and the only thing he buys is a pair of socks. I knew I did not do well. Did my Asperger Syndrome play a role in this? I don't know. It's not like I completely avoided talking to the judges, but I know I never was able to come up with the right things to say.
At the end of the school year, my Mom did something somewhat unethical. She asked my employer, Mr. E, to give me a grade for my job performance. He gave me a C. Mom was supposed to put that grade on my report card. However, since she didn't want it to affect me that badly, she went ahead and changed it to an A. I could not believe Mom did that. I mean, I'm glad she did, but that really went against her principles as a teacher. (Actually, she shouldn't have allowed the employers to have that kind of control over the grades. She should have had them complete written evaluations and then she could confer with the students about the evaluations, get their sides of the stories and grade accordingly.)
More than 20 years later, I told Mom about the goofing off the two girls and I did when we were supposed to be working on the project. Since she had started taking anti-depressants, it didn't bother her as much as it would have when we were getting away with it. She was actually surprised that our project came in first place with us doing so little work on it.
Yes, it was a worthless class. Some of my other classes my senior year were also worthless. It's no wonder I was in zombie mode the whole year.
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