Edutopia - October/November 2008 - (Page 41)

Not Business as Usual Find economics teacher Greg Fisher’s ﬁnancial-literacy curriculum at edutopia.org/ﬁnancialliteracy-curriculum. Your class wil beneﬁt from his twelve years of experience helping students create their own businesses. These materials include an overview of CAMS Inventors— the California Academy of Math and Science’s senior-year business project—along with class presentations about what it means to be an entrepreneur, as well as handouts, rubrics, and business-fair materials. This framework of experiential learning is so transferable that Fisher is adapting the curriculum for middle schools in China. “This is all about the kids thinking for themselves,” Fisher says. “They naturally possess creative and innovative energy. What I do is channel it.” FINANCIAL LITERACY business fair, setting up booths to promote and pitch their products to judges. “Invariably, there are always a few that have legs,” Fisher says. Two of the business concepts his students have come up with: a biorhythmic watch, and climate control for baby seats. THE PAYOFF MAKE IT ANYWHERE Murley runs his entrepreneurship classes, electives within the school’s business academy, with help from the NFTE, using the group’s curriculum and taking part in a business-plan competition the foundation sponsors. As part of the NFTE program, his students take a trip to New York City’s wholesale district each fall. There, they’re handed $50 to buy merchandise they think they can resell for a pro⇒t. The point is to give them a taste of what it means to turn a pro⇒t and set the stage for creating their own businesses. “Most of these kids have no money-management background or skill,” Murley says. “You don’t connect to it unless you have real experience. They have to actually be exposed to how people make money.” When they get to the city, suddenly, it clicks: They can buy up a bunch of costume jewelry or iPod speakers, sell them to their friends, and double their investment. Murley says sales deals often start on the bus ride back to Maryland. After their trip, the students get to work on their business plans. Not only must they come up with a workable idea, like Montgomery Blair student Danielle Adamson’s desktop publishing business, they have to create a cash ⇓ow record, identifying how much to charge for their product or service, how much money they need to start up, where they will get the investment, and how much to allot for labor time and ⇒xed costs such as ⇓yers or Web sites. Adamson made $300 creating a one-hundred-slide Microsoft PowerPoint presentation for, ironically, a group that helps young people start businesses. Among the lessons learned from her ⇒rst paying client: She should charge more than $10 an hour. “Anyone can be an entrepreneur,” says Adamson, who plans to attend Agnes Scott College, in Decatur, Georgia, this fall. “I thought maybe you have to have this particular sort of skill, but you don’t. You ⇒nd something that you love, and you can make it into a business.” Adamson says her idea came from a longtime love of creating things on the computer; she made newsletters for a nonpro⇒t group before she even started high school. Aaron Sacks, another former student of Murley’s, found his inspiration when helping his dad create party favors for his brother’s bar mitzvah. His plan for personalized playing cards turned into a business that has made a $30,000 pro⇒t. Sacks took Murley’s class in the 2005–06 school year, when he was a sophomore, and won $3,000 in the 2006 NFTE regional competition, giving him seed money to get the business, You’re On Deck, started. “It’s just a fantastic experience,” Sacks says of creating a business plan. “Even if it doesn’t work out, even if you lose in the competition, you still gain from the experience of going through the process.” The entrepreneurship class, he adds, taught him ways to make money through investments, how to talk to customers and organize his time, and even technical points like how to use PayPal to collect money. In the end, what matters most to teachers like Fisher and Murley is what their students take away from the classes: ⇒nancial knowledge, career options, and business skills. Murley considers it a win when one of his students gets told she has more business poise than a business school graduate. The week before, he says, he and the student spent ten minutes just practicing a handshake. Another student started selling cards from the Japanese trading-card game Yu-Gi-Oh! on eBay to make extra cash. For Sacks, the entrepreneurship class inspired a career path: He plans to study business at Boston’s Bentley College this fall and will use some of his business pro⇒ts toward tuition. He also wants to extend his market to include the Boston area. “I need to just keep marketing; there’s no reason why it should stop,” Sacks says. Adamson doesn’t know whether she’ll keep up her business down the road, but one thing, she says, is for sure: “This is probably one of the most important classes, if not the most important class, I’ve taken in high school. And I can honestly say that I think I’ll be ⇒nancially independent.” e Alexandra R. Moses is a freelance writer in the Washington, DC, area who specializes in education. EDUTOPIA.ORG EDUTOPIA 41 http://www.edutopia.org/financial-literacy-curriculum http://www.edutopia.org/financial-literacy-curriculum http://www.EDUTOPIA.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Edutopia - October/November 2008

Edutopia - October/November 2008 Contents UpFront Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of Class Cool Schools Design: Lessons from the Mall The Bucks Start Here Go Global: Virgil Rocks Big Ideas: Powerful Learning Mapping Their Futures Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Suze Orman

Edutopia - October/November 2008

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