Episode 4: A Teacher's CTSO Journey: Fundraising and Building Community Support

JACQUE' If you are a CTSO advisor or sponsor, you understand the arduous task of raising money to fund your activities and competition. Well, today I'm continuing my conversation with Breonna Lark. Like I said last week, our conversation was so juicy and packed with information that I had to make it into a series.

For those of you who weren't here last time, be sure to go back and listen to episode two where she talks about being a student of the program she now teaches. Now in this episode, she talks about her DECA chapter, how she's raised money and gained a very valuable sponsorship with a company. That's ranked 30th on the Fortune 100 list.

Before we get into the show, here's a little info about our guest today. Today I'm here with my very first guest who is no stranger to me. She is Brianna Lark, a fashion marketing educator and adjunct instructor at Skyline Career Development Center in Dallas, Texas. What's unique about Brianna being a teacher is that she was once My student in the very program she's teaching now. Her story is a true testimony of the influence of CTE programs and participation in a CTSO. After graduating from the fashion marketing program at Skyline, Brianna continued her education at Stephen F. Austin University to obtain her degree in fashion merchandising with a business minor. Over the last 10 plus years, she's flourished in her career in retail management and visual merchandising.

As I began to plan my exit from teaching, I made a list of potential replacements. Brianna was number one on the list. After three years and several no's, Brianna finally accepted the role of Fashion Marketing Educator. Now I'll let her tell you about that. Just as I knew she would, she hit the ground running and has brought so much energy, perspective, relatability, and tangible industry experience to the program and connects with the students in a real way. She has accomplished so much in her two and a half years of teaching. She's taken students to ICDC two years straight. Awarded the Dallas ISD CTE Level Up Award, and her campus accolades is that she's gotten Teacher of the Month, she's been the Rookie Teacher of the Year, and she serves on many committees and is also a mentor on her campus. She also has been a campus counselor, a camp counselor for an accounting camp. during the summer. Our conversation was so juicy and full of valuable insight that it's a two part series. You ready? Come on into the room.

You're listening to Marketing Adventure, the hub for business, fashion, marketing, and other CTE educators who integrate marketing into the learning experience. I'm your host, Jackie Walker. Each week, I'll cover marketing, education concepts, strategies, and more. Tips, trends, frameworks, and other information to equip you to connect your classroom to digital natives while cultivating an engaged learning environment. So come on into the room where your favorite beverage, snacks, and even your cell phone are all welcome.

So let's talk about the CTSOs. So which one is yours? What are you participating in?

BRIANNA And then I just love, love, love, love, love this one, but I am a sponsor of DECA. So this is my third year. I've been a part of DECA in high school. So I. Entered into DECA my sophomore year and my teacher at the time basically introduced it to us our freshman year. So we knew about it, but we still didn't, it was like a mystery. It was like we knew to expect it, but we didn't know what it was. And so I competed my first year as a sophomore. And so did that for three years, had some ups and downs, a lot of transitions, points where I didn't take it seriously. But ultimately in the end, I ended up going to ICDC, which is international competition, the highest level for DECA, my senior year in high school. And I just remember having DECA set the foundation for me and even just my homegirl, Laura just called me the other day. And she's like this, she's been in rooms with CEOs, CFOs out the country. My best friend works at the headquarters in California for Skechers. We have kids all over and everyone says the same thing. DECA set the foundation for them. It set my foundation for me in college. I was prepared on so many levels. I was prepared to write a 20 page paper. I was prepared to dress professionally when it was time to. I knew how to network. I knew how to advocate for myself. There were a lot of things that I knew how to do that people my age didn't. And it was all because of that, that, that whole CTFO. And I didn't even know at the time that it was molding me. And just setting the foundation for me for life after high school.

JACQUE'  Right. And a lot of students at the time that they're going through it, see the fun. Sometimes they see the challenges and like, oh, I don't want to do that. But then I've heard so many students say, after the fact. Hey, Miss Walker, students in my class are complaining about a 10 page document we have to write, you know, and it was like we're prepared. We did this with DECA 20 page documents and all of that kind of stuff. And just for those of you who don't know what DECA is because I know the audience is probably a little broad, but DECA is the marketing organization for students. So any student who's taking marketing classes they are going to participate in DECA and DECA does cover a wide range of industries: food, retail, automotive, quick serve, and fast food. Every business has a marketing aspect to it. So that's what DECA covers. So tell us about your adventures with DECA with your students. So how has that gone for you?  

BRIANNA  So for me, it's been amazing. I had an amazing mentor Ms. Walker. Who basically was there my first year answering all the questions that I had, helping me out everything that I'm teaching them. I learned it from you and Miss, Miss Brooks and just you being there for me helped me a lot. So after the first year of me asking you 60, 000 questions, I felt like I had it after that. I did a lot of research and I watched, I watched. I watched other teams. I watched other advisors. I watched other schools. And I remember the experience myself. I think that's the biggest thing for me. And so in my first year I took about 22 students to district. Majority of them made it after district because DECA is set up into different competitions. So you start at the district level, which is all of DFW or like Dallas Fort Worth, all these different counties close by, and then if you make it there, you take it to state and state is normally in Dallas or Houston, or, you know, different cities. And then from there, you go on to internationals, which is ICDC and that can be you know, California, Atlanta. I know y'all went to Kentucky. They took that out. Utah. They took it out of rotation. Hey, DECA advisors out there, you can travel for free if you play your cards right. But my first year we made it, I had one team, which they were, they did Community Giving, which is a project inside of DECA, where they write a 20 page paper.

They select something that they want to do in the community and get to give back and they come up with a problem and a solution and they plan things and then execute them and they're documenting it along the way. And this project starts in August all the way into December. And so the girls had to get the school on board with the project called Hermosa which was beautiful. They wanted to talk about self awareness. And so they ran a dress drive where they got dresses donated and then they gave them to kids for homecoming and they took that project all the way and we made it to Atlanta where we spent a week there. That was a pretty cool opportunity. That was a really amazing opportunity. First time, and imagine trying to do paperwork and then when a trip is in the night and out the state, it's triple the paperwork. And then you have to have meetings with parents. And you gotta document it, and all these different things that I'm learning. This is my first year, and I'm excited, they're excited. This is their first year, and we made it to ICDC.

And then my second year, which was last year we made it to ICDC again. But this time I brought two teams. Yeah. Which was pretty cool. Every team I took hit the stage. But two, three of the teams were alternates. So I'm like, I'm figuring this out. I'm figuring it out. You know, I'm getting closer.

But the biggest thing is we do it every day. You know, I'm fortunate to have my kids for three hours so I can segment up the day where we're spending an hour doing dual credit and an hour or 30 minutes doing the fashion show and 30 minutes doing DECA. And I'm preaching to them that you have to study outside of school and different things and make it fun for them, but I make it a part of the curriculum as best as I can.

So it's not just something that's. Separate. So I'm kind of figuring it out. We get to ICDC again. This time it's in Florida. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. We make it to Florida, but this time we're having to raise money and get money donated. But this time my family and the community and everybody was behind me.

One teacher came in and donated 500. So we were fortunate enough to raise about 6, 000, well got about 6, 000 in order to go. The trips are about, this past trip was about 10, 000. Oh wow. And so it was two teams. One team was an Innovation Plan, which is basically creating a plan, an innovative plan that's futuristic.

This was a 10 page paper. And they were called Medi , which is a butterfly. Mm-Hmm. . And so their business was around sustainability and being trendy while being sustainable in the fashion industry. And then the other team, which was my comeback team that did Hermosa last year. They did a project called Happy Flow where they got over 2, 000 tampons and sanitary napkins donated. We went out and gave them to food banks. We did homeless shelters, women's domestic homes, we even hit up Buckner orphanage. We're able to supply a lot of products and so these two teams went to the end.

JACQUE' Awesome.  You're doing an excellent job.

Hey EdVenturous Educator I just want to take a quick break to ask, is this your first time teaching fashion marketing or do you need a boost in your curriculum? Well, look no further. I have the Ultimate Fashion Marketing Class Bundle. It's packed with four vibrant presentations, fun and engaging activities, quizzes, and four major projects for an immersive study semester of fashion exploration and it comes with a pacing guide for an 18 week semester. Additionally, each assignment has detailed student instructions and suggested pacing times so that you can tailor the time frame to fit your teaching schedule. For more information about this must-have bundle, go to marketingedventure.com and search Ultimate Fashion Marketing Class Bundle or simply click the link. In the show notes. Now back to the show.

So tell me about those partnerships. So I know you mentioned friends and family, cause I know that was a big part of your funding for your first couple of years, but let's talk a little bit about that, but then also what partnership you've developed for this year.

BRIAANA So the first two years were rough. First two years were a learning curve. I have to thank every single friend, whether it was an old coworker, someone that I was in the fashion cluster with, or a friend. My support system was amazing. And when I tell you the last two years, I could do any kind of fundraiser. They're there. Everyone is excited to help my girls. Sometimes it's just like people are randomly sending me here's 50. Give the girls a piece of party. I know they've been working hard. And so people just believe in me to the point where it's like, she's bleeding into these kids, but we're going to do the same thing.

I've had people hit me up and say, Hey I didn't have that much money for groceries this week, but I still wanted to get your kids some snacks. Can you stop by and get them, you know my husband, let me put you in on the grocery list. Right. So there's all these amazing things where.

I've had opportunities to be with people, old teachers, teachers. Now we went door to door, trying to get money from teachers. I'll never tell them to do something that I won't do. And so I said, Hey guys, we need about 2,000. We're going to go from each teacher's room and just tell them about, they already knew about DECA, but just tell them what is going forward.

And they've given us a hundred dollar bills, 50 bills, dollars. And. No questions asked. This is for DECA? Oh yeah, here you go. Come back Friday, I'll give you more. And that's because we look out for them too. We hold events. We do free things, we educate them, and we tell them what DECA is, and I think everybody sees the work.

These minorities are able to leave from somewhere that they probably never left from. A couple of my girls have never been on a plane before, so I think them just seeing that. Then my friends saw we were short a couple thousand on the plane tickets. Friends are giving 250, 300, you know, like, we even had Skyline alumni from the 1970 class donating money, right? We have all these different people just supporting us because they believe in us, right? And so, that was tough, but. I remember saying, I can't do this for long, right? So I found out about AT&T which is a decade AT&T project. And it's an organization that is basically set to help you financially. And on top of that, they come in and talk to your kids about different sessions, like time management, college readiness.They even help with DECA projects. They even go to DECA compositions. I'm finding out all this stuff. And so I remember a teacher at Townview saying he had the sponsorship. And so I remember just saying, I'm going to get that sponsorship. I don't know how, yep, but I'm hustling it. And I remember even talking to you about it. And so I, I don't know, I just kept praying about it. And every time I would go somewhere, I would talk about it. When I was with DECA people, I would talk about it and I talked about it to the right person and she said, I know somebody, that's all it took. It was the right time. But she also was, she's a CTE coordinator that believes in us as well. And she walked in my classroom one day and she was like, are y'all going to Disney world on the DECA trip? And I'm looking at her, cause my kids are looking at her like Ms.Lark. And I was like, telling her like, We barely have enough to get there. You know, realistically, we don't have 800 to go to Universal Studios. We would love to, but we can't. And my kids were fortunate enough. Like, they're like, we're okay, Ms.Lark. Give us a pool and we're fine. You know, and she just looked at their faces and she said, I know somebody at AT&T.  

She made a call and I got an email one day and it was from this lady at AT&T and she CC'd the head people at DECA and all these amazing people. And she was introducing herself. And she was like, just saying all my accolades. She just knew everything about me. And she was like, I heard these amazing things. Kim Adams and Josh Shankle have talked you up, and your chap, all these amazing things you've done. We have to work with you. Right. I'm just like, what? She was like, she basically said we have an event over the summer. And we want you guys to come and talk to these AT& T project managers. And I said, okay. And she said, don't leave us hanging because it's summertime. She didn't believe me, but she kept saying, you're probably one of the best communicators because you reply so quickly. But I wanted to tell her, baby, cause you don't understand how long I've been needing this blessing, you know? And she just talks, even when she would put me in an email with somebody else, she would say, this is Brianna Lark, she's a teacher at Skyline, she's impeccable at responding quick, and she's, you know, and so I remember telling my kids, having a sit down, I looked at them, I said, I'mma, I'mma be real with y'all. Ms.Lark don't got it in her to keep begging people for money. I feel like a philanthropist at this point. I mean, we were going, we were doing everything to get money, door to door, business to business. I'm like, I don't have it in me. And I said, we gotta, let's go in. I said, I know it's in the summer and I know y'all don't want to be here on this, on a field trip.

I said, but I need y'all to dress professionally. I said, play the part. I said, let's go. Learn and go through and they looked at me and they said, whatever you want us to do. And we went, we pulled up to this event, Ms. Walker, probably 25 deep. And I walked in the room and the lady's face lit up. Every student, heels on, a dress looking nice.

And she's looking like she really came through. So soon finding out along the line, a lot of other schools didn't come. And so she just. spoke highly of me again, it was just like, she's just an amazing person. And, and so after that, she said, we want to extend the sponsorship and take care of your chapter financially this year.

JACQUE' That's a blessing. Hey, you did what you needed to do. So I know a lot of people out there may not have that exposure to, especially if they're coming from a smaller district. You know, Dallas is huge and we have a lot of corporations that are here in Dallas that we teachers can connect to and partner with and things of that nature. So just going back to your community. So what do you think it was about, you, your students or what you were doing or whatever that your community just had the heart to help? How do you think if someone is looking to you know, raise funds and get connected in a community, like what can they do to wrangle those people in?  

BRIAANA So for me personally, I'm a very transparent person with certain things in my life. So I'm pretty open about my career. So prior to working for DISD. I'm always posting the mannequins. I'm posting my employees. I'm posting my work. So people already knew me as that girl that just knows fashion. People come to me. I style people on the side or you know, just image consulting. When it was a I shifted careers everybody couldn't believe it like, that's you. Like, we know you as this, this girl. You've done it for 10 years, you know, and so shifting over, I was still transparent about my job and I share everything. I share my students. I share stories. I've been on camera when we had a snowstorm and we almost couldn't compete at DECA. I was on camera crying, you know, and I'm, I'm, I'm I'm showing when I'm fighting or when I'm frustrated and I'm putting all these things I'm putting videos of my students practicing and they see they see my students from day one.

Nervous all the way into the end, killing it. And they're, they see basically the transitions along the way. And I think when we made it to the end, everybody just seeing how, and I talk about it, I talk about how it changed my kids, my students, you know life. I mean, I've had one student when she said, Ms. Lark, she said, I've never felt that feeling when I call my name. And I remember as in high school, when I was in from skyline high school, like my heart is just thumping and you're like, and you hear that and you it's tunnel vision. And it's the small things like that. You don't understand it unless you've done it before.

Or you've been in that position. And so seeing the looks on my students' faces when they're standing next to Asian kids. Indian kids, you know, and they're the only people they're coming back to me and saying, it's like, we were talking Spanish and somebody, and they looked at us like, why are they talking like that?

You know? So it's putting them in situations where they feel like they're good enough. And just sharing that with my friends and my family, I think that touches a lot of people. And so, Even just talking to one teacher, they tell another teacher, like, I told one teacher, I think I was talking, venting to her about how frustrated I was because I couldn't get something approved in order for us to make some money or some paperwork didn't come back in time so we couldn't do the fundraiser we needed.

And I had a knock at my door, Miss Walker, and I'm sitting at my desk. And this guy, I've never seen this man before in my life. He said, Are you Miss Lark? And I said, Yes, sir. And he said, Is these your girls? And I said, Yes, sir. He said, and y'all are going to competition. I said, yes, sir. He said, now here you don't have enough money to go to Universal Studios.

And I said, no. He said, and you don't have enough money to feed them. I said, it's okay. I said, my friends, we're, we're working it out. And he said, he just pulled out 50 bills and he just started on the table and he just wouldn't stop and tears were just coming down my face and my students and like, what is going on?

We don't even know this man. Somebody else talked to him and, you know, he just was like, I got, I got to help, you know? And so everybody around me had that mentality. It's to the point where sometimes I have to tell people we're okay, you know? But in order for people to help, I mean, it's just, it's hard because it's like with the school, you can't take certain things, you know, or you've got a lot of paperwork and it's gotta be a donation and different things like that. But. I feel like the way to support is just when those schools are doing those fundraisers like those kids aren't walking around holding those boxes of chocolates for nothing and I thought that like it's always every time you turn around. But these kids are raising funds to do missions to go on trips to study abroad to go on field trips to compete in competitions.

You can do anything. There's no money for these kids to do this stuff. These aren't parties, there's no somebody to write a check, you know, you have to go out and get it. Like, and I say this job has probably been one of the most humbling jobs for me because I've had to go up to people and ask for money.

And so, I mean, I feel like Ms. Walker alone in the last two years, my friends and family have probably donated over 5, 000 and have made shirts for us, made poultry bags for us. Donated Christmas trees. We did a purse sale last year to make money. And I had friends donating Dooney &d Burke purses, Coach, Michael Kors purses. My students' families were amazing too. My best friend Tina shipped me about 18 Adidas backpacks from her job. She's gotten her job buy-in because she talks about my DECA students to them rightl. There's people who have reached out to me and alumni who have reached out to me that want to help because they just see what we're doing and they know, because I'm honest, we struggle.

We don't get, and I think people, even me, I'm thinking you, even you, I'm thinking you got money stashed somewhere to go on these trips. I'm not thinking, and my kids are spoiled. I don't make them pay for nothing, you know. This year, it's a little wake up call to them. It's like, hey, either we fundraise or we pay out of pocket.

And so, I've never known, I guess even when I went to school, I don't even remember paying for nothing, really. And they parted it with like 5 for filtering. 50 for registration just for district alone. So I think just getting that buy-in from my friends and my family, and they just, I don't know if they feel bad or if they just, we've been here from the beginning and we want to see it through.

JACQUE' Right. So you've just  taken people along that journey. You just have been very transparent. So that's very key for people to know, like be transparent, because I don't think I was even that transparent when I was teaching and, and taking people on. It's like a cute little message, Hey, we're going on a trip. Can you donate? You know, but now you take them from the start. That's great. So that's key for you to know out there. If you really want people to support you, be very transparent about your journey. Woo! Now, this part of the conversation had me in tears as I re-listened to it. I hear her passion. And I know the struggle all too well about finding money for these students.

Now, I thought I was going to be able to squeeze the rest of our conversation into this one episode, but it just seemed right to wrap it up with the funding information. So, in the next and final episode of this series with Brianna, she will talk about recruiting for her program and the special event the students produce every year, the fashion show. So come on back to the room next Friday for a teacher meeting you're sure to enjoy.

Thanks for listening to Marketing Adventure. Remember to subscribe, rate, review, and share this episode with someone you think would benefit from the information shared here today. If you have any questions or want to connect with me, find me on Instagram @marketingedventure. All links and resources discussed in this episode can be found in the show notes at www.marketingedventure.com.