Students Challenged to Build Businesses
Since January, Mary Hoke’s seventh and eighth graders have been working on their next big “Venture,” which they presented last month.
Venture, a new event from ACSI (Association of Christian Schools International), gives students the opportunity to create and pitch their business plans to a panel of “investors.”
This year’s theme was good stewardship of the resources God gives to us. In the classroom, Mary used Dave Ramsey’s Foundations in Personal Finance: Middle School Edition as a starting point for discussing good financial decisions with her students.
Over the course of several weeks, Mary invited local business owners to speak to the students, including three former OCS Board members.
The students were divided into groups, and each group developed a business plan from scratch, keeping in mind the theme of good stewardship. They had to consider budget, customers, advertising and more.
When the big day came, each group pitched their concepts to the panel of judges, who were business owners themselves.
Nate Kohn of Nate’s Landscaping, Cari Allison of Nine Ladies Dancing and Chris Korinek of EFI Global brought their expertise to Venture and asked each group probing questions about their business plans, which the students had to answer with professionalism.
After deliberating, the judges chose a winning group. Their business plan was for an app that would track the contents of the user’s closet, helping choose matching outfits each day based on the weather and desired style. The proposed app would take note of which clothing items were used less often so the user could list the unused clothing for sale through the app, thus reducing waste and saving time.
Mary was proud of each group’s efforts and was pleased to see the confidence with which her students were able to communicate their ideas professionally.
OCS plans to include Venture in its biennial programming, alternating with the ACSI science fair.
Venture, a new event from ACSI (Association of Christian Schools International), gives students the opportunity to create and pitch their business plans to a panel of “investors.”
This year’s theme was good stewardship of the resources God gives to us. In the classroom, Mary used Dave Ramsey’s Foundations in Personal Finance: Middle School Edition as a starting point for discussing good financial decisions with her students.
Over the course of several weeks, Mary invited local business owners to speak to the students, including three former OCS Board members.
The students were divided into groups, and each group developed a business plan from scratch, keeping in mind the theme of good stewardship. They had to consider budget, customers, advertising and more.
When the big day came, each group pitched their concepts to the panel of judges, who were business owners themselves.
Nate Kohn of Nate’s Landscaping, Cari Allison of Nine Ladies Dancing and Chris Korinek of EFI Global brought their expertise to Venture and asked each group probing questions about their business plans, which the students had to answer with professionalism.
After deliberating, the judges chose a winning group. Their business plan was for an app that would track the contents of the user’s closet, helping choose matching outfits each day based on the weather and desired style. The proposed app would take note of which clothing items were used less often so the user could list the unused clothing for sale through the app, thus reducing waste and saving time.
Mary was proud of each group’s efforts and was pleased to see the confidence with which her students were able to communicate their ideas professionally.
OCS plans to include Venture in its biennial programming, alternating with the ACSI science fair.
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