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!
About The Guest Blogger:
Hello! I’m Heather Cacioppo from Full SPED Ahead. I am a middle school functional life skills teacher in Illinois. I have been teaching for 8 years and have a M.Ed. Curriculum and Instruction with a focus in Teacher Leadership.
Every Extended School Year (ESY), my classroom of self-contained middle schoolers make and sell slushies for the entire school once a week. This is seasonally done to help raise funds for our program needs for the following school year. We sold these slushies for $1 each!
My students are primarily in the moderate to severe range and need support in fine motor and gross motor supports. Many of these students are working on daily living and functional academic skills. A slushie business was the best solution for us to reach all areas.
How The Business Started:
The slushie business originally came to me because I was looking to raise funds for our program when money was tight. I wanted something that all my students could participate in and also was low cost to us. I also wanted something of high interest, and food was a great motivator!
I have been running a classroom business in my special education life skills classroom for three years now. A classroom business has become a great learning experience for my students.
Administration:
When I first approached my Special Education Director, she had no objection to the business. Her biggest concern was if this was going to be dairy free. I know many of our students have dairy restrictions and wanted to make sure all students were included.
My original plan was to add ice cream to make it more of a smoothie-like consistency, but slushie made more sense to remove the ice cream component.
The next step was to make parents and teachers aware of the business and get any approval for this opportunity. I created a parent permission slip which helped give the classroom an idea of how many people would be interested! Here is the sample permission slip below for parents to approve:
Here is the teacher form as well to notify teachers of this business:
This helped teachers become aware of the business opportunity for a summer treat for their classroom. Students brought in their own money and teachers could buy as well!
Supplies:
Once I had received the parent interest forms, I was able to get supplies with my classroom. My classroom took a community trip to a local grocery store to pick up:
- Cups
- Straws
- Frozen Fruit
We had a local hospital donate a cooler full of ice to support our business. We were able to use the ice without having to create our own or buy bags of ice each week. At the end of ESY, we sent them a thank you card signed by all the students and a picture!
All teachers in my classroom donated their blenders for the summer – we had 4 blenders for all of the orders each week! My speech pathologist helped set up 2 of those blenders to be accessible with switch activation for those students that needed that support.
That was all we needed. We used my classroom kitchen materials such as spoons and scoops to pour from the blender if it was too heavy.
Student Tasks:
Once materials were together, I considered the needs and strengths of the 11 students in my classroom. I also took into consideration their IEP goals. Each student had the opportunity to help in all areas of the business, I broke it down into 3 categories:
- Delivery
- Makers
- Money Management
Delivery
Students in the delivery job would go door to door to pick up the order forms on Tuesday by the end of the day. They also would go and deliver the slushies to each classroom on Thursday before 11AM. This was the last day of the week for my district’s ESY. You can see a copy of the order form below:
The students in the delivery role also had support of my Physical Therapist to use their walkers, AFOs, wheelchairs or other equipment to support their job. This was a great way to get related service involved to address their IEP goals and minutes as well!
Makers
Students in the Maker job would be in charge of making the slushies. I needed to consider how much support these students needed to follow safety and sanitation guidelines. The students that needed more support would be assigned a teacher to oversee the making process. We also wore gloves donated by our school’s nurse.
If a blender became contaminated for any reason, we would throw out that batch, fully clean the blender and start over. This rarely happened. Students were frequently reminded to wear gloves and to use a spoon when needed. Staff oversaw all of the blenders for safety with the blade as some blenders had removable blades.
The Makers also had IEP goals to work on independence in completing a task, following directions, sequencing, staying on task and asking for help when needed. These goals were all focused on when they were in this role. This was a great way to assess functional goals!
Money Management
The students assigned to the Money Management Job were responsible for counting how many slushies we needed for the week and how many in each variety – Strawberry, Peach and Pineapple. They did this after the delivery crew picked up the order forms on Tuesday. Wednesday morning, we would see how many we needed to make.
Since these students counted how many we had for the week, we knew how much money we should have on Thursday. This group of students counted the $1 bills up after we made deliveries on Thursday. A student also oversaw the delivery process to know if we gave out 5 slushies, that class should give us $5 to help with making sure we were getting the correct amount. This was a great opportunity to assess student IEP goals. Many of these students had counting or adding as Math IEP goals. I was able to take data to help support their progress in a functional way!
All of my students had opportunities to try out all jobs! As we did this for 4 weeks, my students rotated through the 3 job opportunities and on the 4th week, I let them pick their role!
Staff & Student Time Commitment:
In summary, here is the daily rundown of how much time and effort was put into the business to get it set up and implemented:
Monday: Send email to staff about business for the week and pass out order forms
Tuesday: Collect order forms by the end of the day
Wednesday: Count order amounts and determine if more supplies is needed
Thursday: Make and deliver slushies
Each week, we would make 50-100 slushies for our program. We would start around 9:15 AM and finish by 11:00 AM. My students then would have time after the business to enjoy their own slushies and watch a movie as a reward!
Additional Advice:
The other word of advice I have is to ask about a budget. Ask your administrators if there is a fund you can use to purchase the business supplies, if not, keep your receipts and pay yourself back afterward. This is ultimately what I did for myself.
Thanks for reading!
Heather Cacioppo from Full SPED Ahead
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