Having a student business has SO MANY benefits.  Depending on what your product or service is, you have the opportunity to practice independence, money math, cooking, responsibility, and so much more!  In this series, various guest bloggers (teachers & special educators) will share their tried and true experience of starting and running a student business for special education students.  Hopefully these posts will give you some great ideas or inspire you to start a classroom business of your own to teach students valuable vocational & life skills!  Up next is a classroom that sells seasonal home decor items!

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About Our Program:

Within our program, students are 14-18 years old with varying severe needs profiles. These can include ASD, Intellectual Impairments, mobility needs, or neurological impacts. Our work focuses on functional life and academic skills, along with vocational exposure, training, and soft skills. Students within our program can transition to our 18-22 program which entails community vocational work and possible paid employment. The program has historically run a dog biscuit business, but due to COVID, this was needed as our district did not want us cooking in school And so our Home Decor business was born.

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How The Business Started:

Coming from my personal love of crafting and a desire to have a scalable, engaging venture our home decor products center on using a Silhouette Cameo 4 machine for vinyl and Heat Transfer Vinyl decals. I also noted several t-shirt businesses run by those with special needs ( Jordyn at Summer Shirt Project, Meg from Megology) and used those businesses as inspiration for a marketable idea that we could vary so that people would become repeat customers. Administration was given a Google Slides presentation on the scope and sequence of this venture, IEP goals addressed, financial needs, and student involvement. Approval was immediate especially given we needed to adapt a previous business due to COVID restrictions.

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Supplies:

For each “season” of products  I pull several ideas of possible products or designs and create a google doc for students to vote on.Once products and designs are decided upon we work to create a budget for the materials which is then shared with administration so we can procure funding. Some items we order via PO on Amazon while others we can purchase in the community using district funds. Last year our main items were wooden decor signs which involved lumber from Lowes, paint & vinyl, and our machine from Amazon.

This year we are working with Heat transfer Vinyl which we purchase from Michaels and flour sack towels from Amazon. The district allowed me to invest in an Easy Press heat press which essentially functions as a large iron with a timer and temperature setting. This helps students with mobility needs safely iron our towels and decals while helping others to be aware of how long to iron for. I would suggest this over a traditional clamshell press which requires a good amount of force to operate and can be difficult for some to use. 

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Time Commitment:

During our vocational blocks (approximately 1 per day), students work on various stations based on what decor we are creating at the time. Stations can include, sanding, painting, decal application, assembly, packaging and quality control. Recently, using Jordyn from Summer Shirt Project’s setups shown on her Instagram as inspiration, I created stations and templates to help students complete each part of the process 1) ironing on decals 2) putting together a towel set 3) packaging 4) quality control. For stations 2 and 3 there is a poster board with black and white copies of each towel and a length of ribbon. Students match a towel to each copy, ensuring they have a full set then match a length of ribbon to cut. This creates independence and decreased prompting. 

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IEP Goals:

The business addresses IEP goals in math (budgeting, totaling costs, dollar up), executive functioning (time management, sequencing, gathering and organizing materials for decor), vocational (work stamina, work soft skills, skill exposure), and life skills (ironing, sanding, painting, assembly). The projects also support students’ gross and fine motor skills needs as we work on sanding, weeding out the vinyl decals, ironing, and other physical parts of the task. 

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Pricing:

With lessening COVID restrictions we are hoping to do some in-person sales at our co-program’s coffee shop, though sales mainly come via Google Form sent to the entire school’s staff. I always offer presales to our families via email.  Products are sold at cost (approximately $5-$6) and we produce around 30 of each product for sale each season despite demand being higher. 

Thanks for reading!

-Anonymous High School/Transition Teacher

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