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Entrepreneurship class inspires teens
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A pilot program at a Chicago high school wins rave reviews from participating students who gained confidence and learned how to start, run and market a small business.
By Ann Therese Palmer
Special to the Chicago Tribune
When Matthew Fort registered to take a class called "Entrepreneurship" for his senior year at Luther High School South in Chicago, he wasn’t sure exactly what he was getting into.
"It sounded interesting and it was at the right time," says Fort, a 17-year-old from Riverdale who describes himself as shy and average. Fort, who graduated this month, got an A in the class, his only one in high school.
During the 45-minute daily class, he and 11 classmates learned the fundamentals of establishing and running a small business. They made and marketed 300 candles, which retailed for between $3 and $20, and learned to write business plans for companies they hope to launch someday. Fort’s plan was for an auto body shop.
They learned to register company names, borrow and manage cash, write collection letters, and even had business cards printed with their names and their companies.
"This is the best class that I had in high school," says Fort. "I’ve learned how to make conversation and hit a certain point. I’ve got more confidence in myself. I want to own my own company doing something I like. I want to be my own boss."
"This was very good for him," reports Fort’s mother, Cheryl, an SBC cable worker. "He was able to see that he could do something and make money, if he wanted to."
This fall, 400 students in eight Chicago public high schools will have the same opportunity as Fort through a $400,000 program underwritten by grants from the Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Foundation, the Nasdaq Educational Foundation, and the Chicago-based Coleman Foundation.
Those schools included are Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep; Dunbar Vocational High School and Simeon Career Academy; and Harper, Juarez, South Shore, Robeson and Wells High Schools, says Jill Wine-Banks, chief officer of the Chicago Board of Education’s Education-to-Careers program.
Eight Chicago Public Schools teachers will attend a three-day workshop in New York this summer on how to teach the class.
The program was the idea of Steve Mariotti, president and founder of National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, a New York City-based not-for-profit organization that has pioneered an innovative curriculum for teaching small-business principles, especially to low-income, at-risk youth.
"This program has several plusses," says Wine-Banks. "It’s a very cost-effective way to update our curriculum and provide a hands-on experience for our students. The curriculum materials are very concise. And it has very strong support from the business community."
NFTE’s introduction into Chicago public schools is one facet of its newly established Chicago operations, says Mariotti, a former financial analyst at Ford Motor Co. NFTE opened a Chicago office last month, headed by Christine Poorman, to coordinate local programs.
Mariotti became interested in entrepreneurship education in an unusual way. In 1981, after he had left Ford to start a New York-based import-export firm, he was mugged and beaten while walking in a park. The youths had wanted $10, Mariotti said.
"It bothered me because I wasn’t able to understand why the kids mugged me over such a trivial sum," he explains.
As a result of the mugging, he became fearful of street kids. A therapist advised him to confront his fears. So Mariotti liquidated his firm and became a typing and bookkeeping teacher in some of New York’s toughest public schools.
One day, after Mariotti had lost control of a class, he says he tried something creative and radical: a mock sales pitch for his $10 watch. "I needed something to get their attention," he says. "All of the sudden, I remembered how much I had enjoyed selling in my own business, how interactive and fun it was.
"When the discussion turned to money and how to make money selling something, the kids were mesmerized. Once I had their attention, I was able to move into a conventional arithmetic lesson based on real-world business examples."
This course evolved into the South Bronx entrepreneurship project, "a crash course in capitalism, given after school and designed for the most troubled students," Mariotti said. In 1987, he decided to make this work his career and founded NFTE.
"Learning about business, ownership and resource allocation is a great strategy to work with a high percentage of low-income, high-risk youth," said Mariotti. "Before I started, the basic belief was that someone who’s poor shouldn’t learn about business. It was only for wealthy children. We changed the paradigm. All people need to know how to enter the marketplace and create wealth for themselves, families and communities."
Course marketed worldwide
Now NFTE annually markets its curriculum to almost 500 schools worldwide. About 17,000 students are enrolled in the U.S., England, India, Belgium and Holland.
NFTE grossed $8 million last year. An estimated 10 percent to 15 percent of its alumni go on to establish their own small businesses.
The curriculum includes an award-winning 377-page book co-written by Mariotti, online coursework, and teacher training workshops.
The Chicago connection
NFTE started a Chicago pilot program at Luther South in fall 2001 at the urging of board member Jay Christopher, chairman of Addison-based Thatcher Corp., a privately held software technology company.
"Entrepreneurship is a solution to so many social and economic ills in this country," Christopher said. "It’s a way to learn life skills, people skills, and how to work with real people in a business environment."
"A lot of entrepreneur books are great on theory, but don’t bridge the gap from theory to practice," Christopher continues. "What’s different about the NFTE program is that students learn to write business plans, negotiate with vendors, make sales presentations and learn business skills while they’re implementing their plans."
Nancy Janosek, who taught the NFTE class for two years at Luther South, agrees.
"They get to see how everything falls into play–accounting, marketing, pricing, how to present yourself to make a sale, how to be positive and optimistic," she says. "They’ve learned that they don’t have to be dependent on anyone else. Even if everyone in my class doesn’t start their own business, they’ve learned how to be better workers."
Lillian Bell, who owns three Jackson-Hewitt Tax Service offices in the south suburbs, and whose son, Marvin, took the class, sees other benefits.
"There aren’t very many black kids–particularly young males–who believe they can be successful as a businessman," she says. "We don’t encourage it. Most African-American parents are afraid to take risks. I thought about opening up my business for a year before I did. I was so worried. But with this course, I hope Marvin won’t be as hesitant."
Marvin doesn’t think he will be. He’s already incorporated some ideas he learned in the class into his part-time job as a disk jockey for parties.
"I’m an above-average student with below-average tendencies," he says. "I turn things in at the last minute. This class changed me. There’s no such thing as turning things in late when you have a business."
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune
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