What is DECA?
Google Definition: DECA Inc., formerly Distributive Education Clubs of America, is a 501 not-for-profit career and technical student organization with more than 224,000 members in all 50 U.S. states, Washington, DC; Canada, China, Germany, Poland, Guam, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Spain.
My definition: DECA is an after school club (sometimes even a class) where students learn skills a lot of which can be applied to real life.
DECA Participation
If we’re being really and I mean REALLY technical here, I joined DECA when I was in 8th grade as my dad had signed me up for something to do over the summer. Although I didn’t attend their meetings or participate so I won’t count that.
I officially joined DECA in Grade 11 participating in the category of Principles of Business Management. We had weekly meetings where we had new “lessons”, roleplay practice, or trivia.
These are my results for DECA 2022 - 2023 school year
Regionals (Peel Regionals):
- Roleplay: 92
- Test Score: 74
Provincials:
- Roleplay 1: 90
- Roleplay 2: 95
- Test Score: 75
Opinions
Likes
DECA was fun, I had a lot of friends in the club, some new, some old. I would highly recommend anyone who’s interested to join. I believe that DECA (like a lot of things) is to some degree a cash grab, but if you can afford it I believe that DECA is worth doing. A lot of skills like speaking to someone confidently, thinking on the spot, and having good general knowledge are basic life skills that everyone should have.
Dislikes
I dislike the scoring system in DECA, similar to hackathons the judging is very based on how lenient the judge is. This is an issue in Ontario DECA and to my understanding has been fixed in the US branches of DECA with a concept called the “Z-Factor”. Again, I might be completely wrong so I suggest you taking this information with a grain of salt