When middle school students at Erie Day School head back to class for a new school year, they will have some nationally recognized future business leaders in their midst.

The students earned national recognition at the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) National Leadership Conference in Anaheim, California this summer.  

Middle school English teacher Janis Filbeck is extremely proud of her team, especially since this is the first year that Erie Day students have been part of the FBLA program.  "These students are so high caliber, they are so curious, they have a strong work ethic and this was a place where they could bring all of that together to just excel," Filbeck said.

The Erie students made their mark among 11,000 students from more than 2,000 schools across the U.S.  F-B-L-A inspires students from middle school to college to become community minded business leaders.

The students first competed at the state level, where all 23 team members placed in the Top Ten, with many qualifying for nationals.  Eleven students went on to represent their school in California over the summer, where their dedication and team work paid off.

They took on challenging topics in areas like exploring business ethics, exploring business issues, critical thinking, web design, and a video game development challenge.

In the process, they learned much, and not only about business, but about research, public speaking, writing and especially about the importance of revising their work.  "We worked with them in helping them develop their public speaking skills, and a lot with revision which is a challenging concept for most adults and I watched these students embrace it with full force because they care and they're curious," Filbeck said.  

Jared Kang, who along with his team partner Vihaan Koradia, took 8th place nationwide in Exploring Business Ethics competition certainly got the message.  "We revised revised, revised, revised over and over again, so it was nice to see that effort really paid off and we won something," Kang said.

Many of the students are already thinking about areas where they'd like to focus as they plan to compete again during this coming school year.