I met with an educator from my local school district last week to offer support for his work with our K-8 grade students.  He is our STEM and technology teacher who has really focused on teaching entrepreneurship to our eighth graders and was named MiSTEM Region 2 STEM Integration Educator of the Year in 2020/2021.  What is really remarkable is that in the limited time that he has with eighth grade students who take his class, he uses design thinking to guide students through identifying a problem they want to solve, figuring out how they want to solve it, doing market research, putting together a business plan, pitching the plan, getting seed money for the venture, filing articles of incorporation, filing tax returns, and running the business.  The crazy thing is that these young entrepreneurs are running amazing businesses.  This year, he has one group of students who sourced coffee beans from South America and who roast and package those beans for local businesses and coffee lovers.  Another group does custom engraving and has secured contracts for custom mugs and other items with several of our local businesses including a global plastics engineering and manufacturing organization.  One other group makes custom fly and fishing lures.  This group negotiated a contract with the DNR to sell their lures throughout the state.  We are so lucky to have such a dedicated teacher who is opening doors to potential long-term careers.  The challenge faced by the district is how to continue the program through high school.  Because we are a small district with limited resources and because school curriculums are so tight in terms of classes that students must take to graduate, if students want to continue their businesses beyond middle school, they must do so on their own.  Most of these ventures seem to dissolve once students get into high school and their focus turns to other things.

I’m writing about this program today because I am interested to hear about similar non-traditional programs that are successfully helping students build career pathways that begin as soon as they graduate high school.  Do we expect to see more of these types of programs evolve as the cost of post-secondary education continues to become further out of reach for the masses?  I am a huge believer in education as the great financial equalizer, but with national post-secondary graduation rates hovering around 30%, I wonder how we can foster more young adults into fulfilling and financially lucrative careers with burdening them with thousands of dollars in student loan debt at the same time.  I’m actively investigating this space and appreciate readers sharing information about any similar programs.