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 beaded lanyard business!
About The Guest Blogger:
My name is Laura Williams and I have been teaching students in moderate/severe programs for over 15 years. I began as a middle school teacher and for the past 7 years, have been serving as a Transition Coordinator, providing vocational education to students from middle school to adult transition. A large part of my position is focused on providing students with opportunities for off campus work experience. In a typical year, the 50-60 Adult Transition Program students go off campus for 1-2 hours of their day to participate in paid work experience at various community job sites. We have job sites in food services, retail and janitorial industries and students are paid minimum wage through a WorkAbility grant.
How The Business Started:
Most of the 2020-2021 school year was spent virtually, using Google meets and Google Classrooms so we were unable to provide community work experience. Once we were able to return to campus on a modified schedule for the final few months of school, it was apparent that we needed an alternative option to allow students to get hands-on work experience. As is par for the course in Special Education, we got creative!
When we discussed ideas for potential work experience, we decided that we wanted to develop something that would allow students to contribute to the greater good of their community, to create a product that was needed. We also wanted to be able to include students who had chosen to remain virtual. With masks being a requirement for the undefined future, the idea for Project BEAD was born. Our first product that we developed is a beaded mask lanyard. We started simple with solid colors and basic alternating color patterns and quickly expanded to add in customization options and come more complex patterns. We added in wooden beads, different sizes of beads and ABC beads so customers could add names and phrases to their lanyards. We could also prepare “to go” kits that we could deliver to virtual students so that they could also participate.
Investment/Start Up Materials:
Due to funds being reallocated throughout Covid closures, we were able to utilize some funds for our start up materials. After doing some youtube research on how to make beaded lanyards, we purchased an assortment of beads and supplies from https://firemountaingems.com/. The supplies included:
- Size 6 seed beads (variety of colors)
- Jewelry wire
- Claps
- Plyers
- Jewelry glue
- Beading trays
- 12×12 Felt
- Organza bags
- Blank thank you cards
- Mailing Envelopes
Our initial investment was $500 and we had an additional $600 added into the business with funds that were available to make program modifications due to Covid. After the initial investment, the business supports itself and has already made back the initial investment.
One hurdle that we faced was how to collect funds while we were remote. Our site had previously acquired a Square register but had not been able to connect it to an account. Again, due to Covid, the district was able to connect the register to an account for us and we could send invoices online to collect funds! This year we will be able to make supply purchases from this account directly.
Pricing:
Depending on the size and style of beads, and adult sized lanyard requires about 300 beads, approximately 2 feet of beading wire, 2 claps, crimp beads and crimp bead covers. Our cost is around $5 per mask lanyard and about double the beads and wire for an ID badge lanyard.
We ask for a suggested donation of $10 per beaded mask lanyard and $15 for ID badge lanyards. We hope to add in bracelets and additional beaded products to increase the longevity of our business well beyond when masks are required. Student wages are paid through a grant so all of the proceeds are utilized to purchase additional materials as needed.
Student Tasks:
Our students were thrilled to be working again and excelled! Students currently assist with preparing beading kits for each order, actually beading and completing the orders, gift wrapping and hand writing thank you cards for each order. We have plans to add additional roles this year, having students take over some of the bookkeeping, inventory ordering, and shipping, as well as having students taking product photos to use on social media and for “ready to ship” sales posts. Our hard working students are paid minimum wage through a partnership with the Department of Rehabilitation (DOR) and have learned to track and submit their hours through Google forms.
Pre-Production:
Assembling a Lanyard:
Marketing:
We started small. We had no idea what the demand would be or how quickly students could complete an order. We sent out information to a few local community members and school district staff to begin and we quickly realized that the demand for the product was growing! Our Special Education staff in our local high schools sent out our ordering link to their entire sites and at least one Principal showed off his lanyard at a staff meeting. These supporters brought close to a $1,000 worth of orders! Some of our most popular items are from our “School Pride” series- beads in various patterns to match the colors of our local schools!
We developed a Google form for orders and if we have any gaps between orders, students made “ready to ship” items in some of our most popular colors. They also used any slow times to be creative and experiment with different patterns and color combinations. We post these items on our school social media and these “crafter’s choice” items have been some of our most popular items! We also enclose a “Handmade by” card with the artist’s 1st name so people get that human connection with out artists, as well as hand written thank you note from the students thanking customers for supporting their business. The card is also stamped with our school name and logo so potential customers can find us! Many of our customers start with a lanyard for themselves and return to purchase gifts for friends.
Additional Advice:
We focused on finding a project that had a variety of skills and roles within the business to ensure that was an appropriate job for each student. Some of our students do not have the fine motor abilities to work with the smallest beads, so we ordered some additional larger beads, as well as having students assigned to wrap and package completed orders, deliver materials to different classrooms and help with inventory and sorting materials. It was important to us that the business was accessible to all of our students.
In the beginning, a lot of the business was ran from my dining room table. I was working remotely and we couldn’t mix cohorts of students. I prepared the bead kits and dropped them off on Monday. The kits were distributed to the different classes and delivered to virtual students. I would then pick up completed orders, take them home and add the final clasps before returning to school for students to wrap and package. Letting go of control and finding a small team of on campus staff that I could teach those steps to made a huge difference. So that is the tip- don’t do everything yourself! Figure out which staff will be as passionate about the project as you will and let them help! Slowly, one step at a time, add more to what the students can do themselves as well.
We also wanted to fill a need within our community so that our students were able to contribute and see value in the work that they were doing.
Making photo task analysis cards also helped us ensure that students (and staff!) understood the steps and ensured we had a consistently well-made product. This also helped when we had a handful of students remain virtual- we could drop off kits at their homes and staff could screen share the tutorials to support them virtually.
Thanks for reading!
Laura Williams
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