Just a couple months into the new school year and young entrepreneurs are taking the town by storm.
This year, St. Anthony’s School has introduced a unique entrepreneurship program to its high school curriculum, and is being noticed.
A couple of weeks ago residents may have noticed students throughout the area setting up different enterprises, from bake sales to movie posters, they were pounding the pavement.
“Most of the students have finished running their first venture already,” said JoAnne Akerboom, who is delivering the course. “The most successful one in terms of profit were two guys who decided they were going to do car detailing. They did such an excellent job that people were lining up for their work.”
The Entrepreneur program at St. Anthony’s has students excited for their first ventures. Cody Makowecki sold off part of his poster collection to get the ball rolling.
Akerboom introduced the program to St. Anthony’s leaning on work she had previously done introducing a similar program in Eastern Canada. The work is very much experiential.
“We call these ‘mini-ventures’ or a business for a day. Basically we told them within the first week of September you are going to run a business for a day,” said Akerboom.’
In the case of the auto detailers, Akerboom said they have continued and are now looking for a place they can continue, as the weather gets colder.
She said they have to complete a second venture before Christmas. The course specifies that one venture has to be community or school based and has to be a not for profit venture.
“That will be where they give back to the community. One of the things we are teaching is that entrepreneurs are very community oriented,” said Akerboom.
The program is unique in that it develops the student in a number of subject areas, such as communications, marketing technological literacy, mathematical literacy, decision-making and problem solving. In all these areas, the students self critique their progress.
“A big area is personal qualities, characteristics and attitudes that are needed to succeed, generally speaking, critical and creative thinking and independent learning,’ said Akerboom. “They actually have to think about how they develop in all of these areas every time they run a venture and mark themselves.”
She said the course is challenging students and they are meeting the challenge head on.
Some are a little hesitant because you put yourself out there and you could fall flat on your face. For some of them that is hard, you are pushing them out of their comfort zone. But even some of the shyest people have picked ventures in which they are comfortable,” she said.
This year there are 17 students registered for Entrepreneurship 10. The course will continue to the 30 level.
