OSAKIS — Students in career and technical education courses aren’t just learning about entrepreneurship; they’re living it.
Bobbi Jo Haakinson is a business instructor at Osakis High School and heads up the screenprinting business run by students. It started as a way to incorporate some new curriculum.
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“You’re constantly looking for new ideas,” she says, “I had come across another teacher in a different state doing this. The whole idea of an entrepreneurship course is offering these students firsthand business experience without even having to leave the school setting. They’re able to do everything here.”
Students are exposed to every aspect of a business without having to leave the building, and when Haakinson says every aspect, she means it.
“We’re touching on business communication. We’re touching on accounting. We’re touching on business management. We’re touching on supply chain management. We’re touching on marketing. It’s really all the classes that you want to teach throughout your whole day. You can combine it into one course and they are getting hands-on experience. They’re getting all of those things in a real life setting.”
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The course is called the Silverstreak Merchandising Lab and it’s offered as an elective. Haakinson says it starts with looking for trends and brainstorming the next potential customer base.
“We’re constantly looking for our next potential customers — what could we put out there that people would want? We are always dreaming big — Pinterest and Google are our friends. We go out there and look at trends and we see what things look nice on shirts and how we can formulate them to our atmosphere here at the school. The students are never just sitting. If we are slowly doing something on the production line we are constantly re-creating, developing new logos, different things like that.”
At a recent Silverstreak merchandise sale, Haakinson says they ran with three different logos that students created and it was a great experience for customers and designers alike.
“The students that create those logos, they’re like ‘hey, that’s the one I created and it’s getting worn all around the school.’ So it’s just a cool feeling for them, too.
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“I talked about business communication,” continues Haakinson. “They’re speaking to our clients, they’re taking their orders, they’re processing through their stuff, they are redesigning the logo if the customer doesn’t like it, they’re communicating prices. They’re talking about what product is best for this customer’s needs, and if a customer has a question and they’re coming back and talking to their classmates and making sure that we’re resolving any concerns the customer has, and they’re meeting timelines. It’s just crazy all the things they are compiling that they don’t even realize because they’re just working and enjoying what they’re doing with hands-on experience.”
“It’s so much fun to see the lights go off in their head when they’re figuring all this stuff out they’re like ‘Wow, we could do this in our basement if we wanted!’ and I’m like ‘Yes, you could. You know how to do that — you need to find the heat press — but you can actually do that. It’s just fun to see them thinking into their future and how this is going to possibly affect whether it’s a side job or a full-time thing for them.”
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Speaking of business communications, the students were even tasked with taking photographs that helped illustrate the ideas in this interview, with an eye toward future interactions with journalists or preparation of news releases.
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Monday night, the Osakis School Board voted to chip in the final money toward a Universal laser system, a laser cutter/engraver for the school paid for, almost completely, by Aagard, Douglas Machine, Massman, Alexandria Industries and Brenton Engineering. And that will open up a whole new area of possibilities for the Silverstreak Merchandising Lab.
“There’s so many different things we can do if we open up to possibilities of laser engraving. Like hat logos; we could do baseball hats, we could do all different kinds of things. So it’s going to be a readily-used item throughout all of CTE and in many other facets of the school as well.”
