As graduation approaches, businesses wonder again whether students they hire will be aptly trained and prepared to “hit the ground running” as new employees.
Will they be well-grounded in business concepts, can they produce on deadline and deliver extraordinary customer service?
Although they are several years away from earning their first real paychecks, students at Seattle’s B.F. Day Elementary School experience for months the fine points of how to run a business, including financing, marketing, advertising, production and selling while preparing for the school’s biggest event of the year.
“The Village” transforms classrooms into businesses and students into managers, employees and consumers culminating in one afternoon in May when the school takes on the look of a pint-sized shopping mall on steroids.
“Ask our children of all the special days we have at school, I think everyone will point to Village as their favorite,” said principal Susan McCloskey, who heads the 280-student school in the city’s Fremont neighborhood. “It’s incredibly hard work, and they go home very tired.”
But it’s a good tired.
Planning for the Village begins in January. Classrooms are transformed into businesses. A fifth-grade class becomes the very important Village Bank. Another chooses “Italian Fizz” for its Italian soda enterprise. Fourth-graders are turned into cooks, wait staff and kitchen help for their Village Pizza restaurant.
Meetings are held to determine production levels, product lines, establish sales goals and marketing strategies. Staff requirements are established and students begin applying for jobs. Many jobs require a cover letter and references to bolster the student’s application.
Once jobs are established, including the selection (by students) of business managers, students produce business cards that are eagerly traded among each other.
“What we try to do is integrate the educational basics along with the planning for Village,” McCloskey said. “In a working business, there’s a ton of math applications, a lot of writing, some science, art and communications skills that all can be applied at the appropriate grade level.”
For the teachers, “it’s a ton of work” that they still eagerly embrace each year for the children, McCloskey said. The students like it because what would be normal, everyday schoolwork is applied to the real-life experience of preparing and building the business.
But the Village also provides opportunities for students to spread their wings beyond the basics. A fifth-grader hired as a delivery person for Italian Fizz designed a unique carrying tray for four drinks that could be delivered without spilling.
Some student-business people helped arrange field trips to similar community businesses. Employees of the Village’s “Paper Planet” learned a great deal in their visit to the UPS store. Entrepreneurs of the “Garden Gazebo” toured some of Fremont’s well-known garden stores to gain marketing and display insights.
As in any commercial enterprise, financing and banking are particularly important, and the Village adds a challenging concept – its own foreign exchange rate. At Village Bank, one U.S. dollar is worth five B.F. Day dollars.
Every business needs customers with money to spend, and the Village welcomes students as consumers along with parents, siblings, friends and anybody else willing to shop during the afternoon frenzy.
As planning continues, students earn B.F. Day dollars by doing odd jobs around the school and in the classroom. They are paid by check, and find (like their parents) that 20 percent of their earnings are deducted for taxes.
“The goal is to have each kid earn $120 (BF), minus $20, for $100,” said McCloskey. In addition, students learn the high cost of advertising. The school librarian who produces the video advertisements on the school’s closed circuit TV network charges each business for the showing.
This year’s Village was regarded as one of the biggest successes in its nine-year tradition. Several businesses sold out of products and, overall, Village generated profits of $1,100 (U.S.), up 20 percent over last year. This year’s security detail (called Peacekeepers) reported no disciplinary actions, unlike some previous occurrences of attempted shoplifting and minor theft.
This year’s Village day also attracted a high number of B.F. Day alumni, some now in high school, who got permission to leave school early to attend. “To see them here tells me what an impression Village makes on kids,” said McCloskey. “It really makes the whole day.
Write Eric Zoeckler at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206 or e-mail mrscribe@aol.com.
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