School’s out for the summer, but DECA advisors are already planning for next season. There is one conversation worth preparing for now: the challenge regarding ICDC absences. To colleagues, these absences often feel egregious, especially when they hear that competitors spend only 15 minutes before their judges and that much of the remaining time is spent having "fun." The frustration is real, and it is felt by both DECA advisors and students. However, DECA conference engagement is about so much more than just the competition. Here are the evergreen skills that students are actually building from the experience.
The Conference is the Curriculum
ICDC is an immersive, high-stakes professional simulation starts the moment students board their flight without their parents. Students do things that no classroom assignment replicates. They:
Manage independent travel – flights, schedules, unfamiliar city logistics, time zone adjustments, early alarms, wrinkly business attire, food forages, hotel gym workouts, daily planning – with zero parental scaffolding.
Decode a convention program and navigate a conference hall the size of a small town to arrive at their competition rooms on time.
Walk up to strangers from other states and countries, initiate conversations to exchange pins, and build the foundational business skills of establishing rapport and negotiating in real time with other teens and adults.
Support one another under pressure: competing hard, cheering each other on, and holding it together when nerves hit.
Represent themselves, their peers, their families, your DECA program, and your school with poise, professionalism, and pride.
Add an internationally recognized credential to their resumes.
Manage missed assignments and keep up with coursework from their hotel rooms – a direct simulation of what it means to travel for work and still meet deadlines back at the office.
Reflect on their own performance afterward and begin identifying what it will take to level up – not just at DECA, but in any high-stakes professional environment where they’ll be measured against other capable, driven individuals.
These are the evergreen competencies that show up in college interviews, first internships, client presentations, and every professional networking event for the rest of their lives. DECA students practice these under real pressure, in a real environment, with real stakes.
They Also Had Fun
ICDC 2026 students visited the College Football Hall of Fame and the Georgia Aquarium. They explored Centennial Olympic Park and noshed at a DECA Street party. They made friends from schools they’d never heard of, and experienced Atlanta as young people learning to move through a new locale with confidence.
To some colleagues, that sounds like the problem. But fun is not the problem – it’s a critical conference component. Part of what we are trying to produce as educators is people who engage in healthy, positive play as payoff for productive and challenging work – people who can be fully present at a dinner table or sports event with a client the same night they succeeded in a high-stakes presentation. Such a skill cannot be taught from a textbook.
A Challenge to My Colleagues
For our students who have earned the right to compete at a DECA state or national conference, we can ask our colleagues to think differently about the days of missed classes. Those days are full of a kind of learning that is harder to grade, harder to measure, and – I would argue – harder to replace than almost anything else we offer in the daily grind of school. The student sitting in a hotel room finishing assignments at 11 PM after a full day of competing, networking, and managing their own life is applying skills that their teacher colleagues helped build. As one student shared, “I feel like everything we do at school led to this moment. Reading, writing papers, debating, teaming up with classmates, getting things done on deadlines. And now being here at ICDC and having this competitive experience is amazing and so fun and truly something I’ll remember forever.”
So the next time colleagues balk at students missing classes for ICDC, ask them to extend the same flexibility they’d expect in the professional world. Then ask the student to report back when they return. The conversation that follows might change how that colleague thinks about what school is actually for.