What To Know About Entrepreneurship in Collier County Schools

It has been my pleasure and honor, as a School Board member, to visit many of our middle schools and participate in the judging of their entrepreneurial projects. The middle school students and their teachers never cease to amaze me with the thoughtful, creative ideas they generate. Here’s how the Entrepreneurship classes at the middle schools are formatted.

The teachers challenge students to think outside the box, find a unique idea that they can ultimately market to their fellow students after testing the idea, refining and improving it and retesting to see if it improves the design. The ideas that students brought forward were inventions that would solve problems in their daily lives, some as “simple” as finding a way to keep the pages on a music stand from turning on their own to prevent the artist from losing their place while playing. “Simple” doesn’t describe the thought process, analysis and evaluation that goes into a project, however.

Every time I hear their “pitches” (ideas), I wish I had had experiences like this in my middle school/junior high. I would have been so much more aware of advertising and alert to the misinformation that, apparently, dulls the senses and makes us more vulnerable to scams/shams/shenanigans to take money from us, the unaware consumer. 

Great news! The Entrepreneurship studies have been extended to fifth graders in all our elementary schools! This means that these students will learn the fundamentals of problem-solving, communication, team building, teamwork and the preliminary aspects of determining solutions, maybe not to the extent that they do in middle school, but they are learning and practicing the groundwork before they plunge into the actual Entrepreneurship middle school program.

Here are some observations from my visit to Tommie Barfield Elementary School and the classroom of Ms. Jody McCarty, a former Golden Apple Teacher, and present Computer Technology and Entrepreneurship teacher.

First of all, the students, even after their fourth day of Entrepreneurship class, were respectful and listened to directions from Ms. McCarty. These fifth-grade students were attentive and anxious to begin the challenges of the day. Previously to my visit, students were divided into groups and had to determine the roles of each student in the group’ for example, one was chosen to be the Scribe, another was the Speaker and so on. 

After some preliminary activities, the main challenge was explained by Ms. McCarty. While the materials were presented to the group, there was attentive silence… until the challenge was revealed.

The tools of the challenge were six red plastic cups per team, one piece of string per team member attached to a rubber band at equal distances from each other. The challenge was to have the team work together to move the six, red cups with the tools they were given to place three cups upside down on the bottom layer and balance two cups on top of the three cups, also upside down and the last cup on top.

The first reaction by the students were comments like, “That’s impossible,” “No way, nobody can do that” and utter frustration with the challenge. As an observer, I had to admit my skepticism about solving this problem.

The first objective was to determine the method of picking up a cup, which necessitated trial and error and then each group perfecting their techniques. To watch this effort was exhilarating. The team members encouraged and gave suggestions to each other as the challenge continued. There were “whoops” of success and excited modifications to improve their strategies. You could see the goal of each team was to succeed ahead of the other teams.

To say that the competition was fun is an understatement. As the students perfected their techniques, the excitement exploded. As each group came closer to solving the problem, the euphoria grew until the first successful team began cheering and the others knew the challenge WAS possible and they redoubled their efforts to succeed.

So, what are they learning as prerequisites for more advanced problem-solving and entrepreneurship in middle school? Patience, creative thinking, problem-solving skills, communication, responsibility, analysis of problems and generating ideas and prototypes to test, along with debriefing skills/sharing strategies that worked. They all are eagerly awaiting the next challenge from Ms. McCarty. These fifth graders were very candid and open with the critiques of their progress and it was obvious that listening to the group members that succeeded first propelled them to closure as they redoubled their efforts.

There are great things happening in Collier County Schools, this is one of many. “Shark Tank,” here they come! Be sure and check out the photos.