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 flower pot business!
About The Guest Blogger:
Hi there! My name is Julia Cahill and I have taught students with mild to moderate disabilities in a self contained setting for the last six years. I recently moved, but at the last high school in which I taught, I began a small business called “Mustang Mums”. We painted flower pots, planted succulents and plants within them, and sold the flower pots to staff members within our building.
How The Business Started:
The idea for this class business started because I was new to the school and it was the 2020-2021 school year, so I knew we wouldn’t be able to have any community jobs for the foreseeable future. I wanted to do something that could be done with COVID restrictions in mind, which basically meant nothing that involved food. My students that year ALL seemed to love art- they all asked to take art electives and any free we time we had was dedicated to arts and crafts. I’ve always loved plants and love to do hands-on art activities with my students, so I googled how to paint terracotta flower pots and a star was born!
Administration:
I ran the idea past my administrators, and they were immediately on board. Our program had some funds from the previous year so we used that as some start-up money. We also had to agree that we would only be taking “suggested donations” for our flower pots- we couldn’t put an actual price tag on them. Thankfully, every staff member who ordered a flower pot paid the suggested donation, if not more!
Supplies:
The supplies needed were: acrylic paint, Mod Podge glaze, paint brushes, paint sponges, painters’ tape, terracotta flower pots, terracotta flower pot saucers, dirt, plants (we used succulents and spider plants). We purchased all of the art supplies and the flower pots at Michael’s Craft stores. We were lucky enough to have our Botany teacher donate her own personal succulents and spider plants to use for this small business.
It cost about $4.00 to make each flower pot, and our suggested donation was $10.00 per pot.
Student Tasks:
There were so many tasks involved in this class business. To start with, the students brainstormed and voted on the business name. Our school mascot was the Mustangs and with “mums” being a pretty simple flower name that started with an M, it worked out nicely! Next, students created logos. I printed out templates of flower pots and mustang horses, so students had the option to color in or decorate that, or students could create a logo of their own. Once students submitted their logo designs, we, as a class, voted on our favorite and that became our logo.
Once we had a business name and logo, I created a Google doc to send to staff members at our school to gauge interest. The students created the message about what our business was and estimates of suggested donations. Once we had a lot of responses, we reviewed the Google doc together and estimated about how many pots we would probably sell to, so that we could later reflect on this estimation based on the Google doc.
Once we had some solid interest, we looked up and created designs. I determined that we would give customers 5 options of colors and designs to choose from, but that the students could create and vote on those 5 designs. I wanted students to feel invested in this business and to know that it was THEIR creation, not mine. Therefore, they were involved in every part of the process, even if that meant it would take months to get going.
Once we voted on designs, we created 5 “prototypes” and our flower pots would be made to order. We created an order form using Google forms for staff members to place their orders with their preferred design/style and went from there! Students were involved in every task after that, as well. They reviewed the Google forms, determined how many pots and paint we would need to purchase, and then painted the pots! They were also involved in creating thank you tags for each pot and delivering the pots.
The best task, in my opinion, of this class business was the planting piece. I say this because we teamed up with the Botany class at our school to do so. Therefore, my students had the amazing opportunity to teach their peers about their business and involve their peers, as well. My students were the leaders and their typically developing peers were their helpers. A lot of times the roles reverse, and people with disabilities are the ones who are being helped. It was truly amazing to watch my students step into that leadership role, to talk about their business to their peers, and to recruit their help in planting the various plants in the painted flower pots.
Of course, as we sold products and collected money, students were also responsible for counting that money, completing deposit slips, and turning that money into our bookkeeper.
Staff & Student Time Commitment:
I had one class period per day (50 minutes) of “Job Training”. We started this business in early September, had the flower pots ready and delivered throughout December and January. We typically worked on our flower pot business 3 times per week during Job Training. We considered it an “in school job” so I had my students rotate through it with their other school jobs, therefore only 2-3 students would work on the Mustang Mums business at a time.
Our flower pots were only sold to staff members around our school. Because I am at a new school now, I do plan to start up a similar business at my new school and hopefully create a Facebook or Instagram account to sell the flower pots to people within the community. I live in a place that really values locally-made products and business, so I believe there would be a lot of community support.
Additional Advice:
My biggest piece of advice for starting up a small business with your students would be to ensure that it’s fun and that it can involve others beyond the self-contained classroom. My students loved to paint and they loved to be outside, just walking around the fields and neighborhoods surrounding our school. Knowing that we couldn’t do anything with food because of COVID, I came up with the flower pot idea. It was a very hands-on business with so many functional skills involved in every task. But most importantly, it was fun for my students.
They never complained when they saw that they were assigned to “Mustang Mums” as their in-school job for the week – which made me re-think the jobs that they WERE complaining about (see ya later, recycling! You are no longer functional to us!). Make sure it is fun and rewarding, because the biggest goal of a class business should be to help your students develop an appreciation and understanding of holding a job, and to know that a job should feel fulfilling and yes, sometimes even fun!
Thanks for reading!
Julia Cahill
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