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Eagle’s Life
Classroom Entrepreneurs Students are using the skills they have learned in Youth Entrepreneurs to market food, clothing, and other merchandise.
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written by: Ian Toney
or the students in the Youth Entrepreneurs class, November 19 marks an important day in class. Market Day allows these students to sell products to their classmates and obtain valuable experience in marketing and business. “It’s a class where we try to solve problems for profit. That’s really what entrepreneurship is about. We try to do that in an efficient way with foundational values, things like sound judgement and win-win focus, to make sure that we’re being entrepreneurs in the right way and not the wrong way,” Youth Entrepreneurs teacher David Chatlos said. Many of Chatlos’ students had been planning their projects for Market Day even before the official start date, spending multiple class periods brainstorming their ideas. “This is my first year. It is pretty cool, you do new stuff every day. Market Day is what the class is mostly about and what everybody is hyped up for,” senior Mario Martinez said. Martinez decided to sell chicken from Raising Canes for the Market Day, along with his classmates senior Drew Case and senior Tyler Bliss.
“We were going to sell popsicles, but we decided that Cane’s was more marketable and easier to do, as well as able to get us more money. We also had the idea for Sonic slushies, but due to COVID we did not have many options for that,” Martinez said. While there was doubt concerning how well food from Canes could be obtained and distributed conveniently, the group managed to find a solution that proved to work much better than their previous ideas. “At first we didn’t know if Cane’s was going to work, because we were going to do the tailgates, but those do not work because of Covid. We are going to have to individually package everything, but we worked that out and Cane’s said it would be fine,” senior Tyler Bliss said. Mr. Chatlos, the one who has been teaching the class for the past five years, has been pleased with his student’s entrepreneurship and dedication to the project. “They seem to be pretty into it. In fact, they were pretty excited about getting started, and probably wanted to start early. I felt like we were ready, but we’ve been working it out for roughly two weeks now,” Chatlos said.
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designed by: Ian Toney
photos by: Scott Beeton Students prepared for Market Day in Youth Entrepreneurs, a marketing and business class taught by David Chatlos. “It’s a class where we try to solve problems for profit. That’s really what entrepreneurship is about,” Chatlos said.