Senior Spencer Spears is a member of the after school club, Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA). She joined at the beginning of her senior year for the first time. She joined after finding out Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) was no longer an after school option at Harrisonburg High School.

“I joined FBLA because I wanted to do DECA. I was talking to my friend Ann [Diaz] about joining DECA. She said that we didn’t have a DECA club anymore, so [she told me] that FBLA was the next best thing,” Spears said.

Spears likes that you can get a good healthy community out of FBLA and that you have the chance and opportunity to learn valuable things for the business world.

“My favourite part about FBLA is all of the students that do it. The community is really good. We are all really supportive [of each other] and we get to work on fun projects together. I also like Mr. Denlinger, [the advisor of FBLA]. He is really funny. We learn a lot of communication skills. We learn really good business skills, how to speak in front of people and how to present in front of a panel of judges. It’s all really interesting to me because I want to learn how to be a better communicator,” Spears said.

Spears also finds it enjoyable due to her friends being apart of the club. They get to work together often and hangout. 

“We meet once a month but we have to work on our projects a lot, so we work on our projects outside of school together,” Spears said.

Spears and her partner work outside of school and in school on their business plan, which they will present for the upcoming statewide event April 17, 18 and 19.

“[We haven’t had any competitions yet] but my partner, Fernando Escobar-Medina, and I are taking our business plan to states. We also have a regional competition coming up but we qualified for states, so we are going to states,” Spears said.

Spears really enjoys being able to be apart of FBLA as well as having an outlet for business type work and practicing communication skills.