Business Pathway Coming To SJHHS

Riley Goodfellow, Staff Writer

In the upcoming year a new business pathway is being brought to life at SJHHS. The plan includes two different subjects which are the Business One Course and the Virtual Enterprise class.

The Virtual Enterprise class has a principal goal of learning the ins and the outs of a business. The teacher, Jeremy Wooten, said the objective is to focus on a range of things, “from developing and creating a product to writing a business plan to marketing the product… it’s mainly about starting and running a small business.”

it’s mainly about starting and running a small business

— Jeremy Wooten

The second class the school is trying to develop is the Business One Course, which, “is an introduction to business and that class will be on the basic fundamentals of business and it’ll range from large businesses to small businesses,” said Wooten.  

Wooten said that the school “is working with Saddleback College to see if [they] can get one or both of [the classes] to be college credit. So [students] would get elective credit at SJHHS and at the same time college credit at Saddleback.”

A student that finishes the class could possibly earn a certificate and if a student were to take both courses from the business pathway that they could earn a certificate which looks good on college applications.

The Virtual Enterprise class is geared towards juniors and seniors and the Business One class is mainly geared towards sophomores, although it “depends on what the [school’s] master schedule looks like and what all of the other electives are doing,” said Wooten.

The plan, for now, is for Wooten to teach these business classes.

To sign up students can go to their guidance counselor and request to be in the class and students will enter as they would for any other elective offered at SJHHS. The school will advertise more when the class comes closer to being finalized and next school year class sign ups approach.

Wooten said, “the Virtual Enterprise class will only be able to accept a certain number, and that number hasn’t been determined yet, and [the school] will probably have to do an interview process… for certain positions in the class.”

Wooten claims that none of this “is a done deal yet but, [the school] is in the process and planning stages of trying to make this happen. So far it looks good [but there will] be more answers as [the school] approache[s] spring and… students being able to sign up.”

The goal is  that either one of the classes is going to be available by fall of 2017 and best case scenario would be to have both classes up and running. The Virtual Enterprise class would likely be a year long course and the Business One class would likely be a semester although it will depend on what Saddleback decides on.