Ok, not technically a million dollars but freedom and money. And, in the desire of being completely upfront I definitely saw Barenaked Ladies in concert last week so this little ditty is clambering around in my head. (An emu? Does the school need an emu!)
Back to the point at hand. We received a grant and a call for ideas went out to staff. We are given an opportunity to pioneer a truly original and educational experience for students in our school. Isn’t that every teacher’s dream? Hey – teacher there, we’ve got this new grant and you can pitch ANYTHING and we might consider it! What do you want to do?
Frozen.
Blank. Stares.
Crap.
I feel like there are more reasons than simply a lack of creativity stopping me from replying to my boss’ request for club, summer program, etc. ideas. For one, I’d have to lead the group, I’ve never been in charge of a club, especially a new one. I am truly scared of proposing an idea and then not having a single clue on how to follow through.
So I believe my brain has decided to do me a solid and completely shut down on any good idea. I figured perhaps my twitter and blog buddies might want to share their freedom and money ideas if only to see them wobbly implemented by a (second year?) teacher who will definitely cry for help once a month.
So – if you had a million dollars (yea, right) what club, resources, program, would you implement at your school?
Maker club. Get arduinos, soldering irons, 3D printers, laser engraver/cutters, magnets, lots of wires, solar cells, and keep a reserve budget for unexpected items kids might need to realize their inventions. My brain is salivating, wishing I could have that.
I don’t think you would have to lead that club on your own. The CAD teacher, metal shop or woodshop teacher, the physics teacher, the art teacher, maybe even entrepreneurship teacher could have a hand in as well.
If I had this grant, I would propose a program to immerse the students in the math of the retail business. Why not set up a small student run, in-school business. There are so many possibilites for instructional mathematical moments. First, there is the basic cash management. Then there are the intracies of inventory (product acquisition, cost of goods, inventory aging, and write downs, to name a few) Metrics are an important part of a successful business. We call them KPI or key performance index. Those would range from metrics for sales of specific items and performance to goal, forecasts based on current trends, the cost of acquisition of new customers, year over year metrics. The list could go on and on.
Here is a simple test I would give to all of my job candidates. I have an item I sell for $40. I’m having a ten per cent off sale. How much does the customer save and how much do they spend? You would be agast at the number of wrong answers, even from college graduates. If a candidate could not answer correctly, I usually didn’t hire them. The reason is that in business, you need to keep track of so many metrics, even if it is just your own sales, to understand how you can improve and therefore make more money.
If small business is such a key component of the US economy, why don’t we start preparing the next generation of entrepreneurs as soon as possible?
Good luck with your school year. Just as a side note, you are probably wondering how I stumbled into this blog. It was your Twitter comment about a donut at Federal donuts which was retweeted by the store. So, Ms Math wizard, what are the chances of that happening?