November 2008 — News
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At-Risk Students ACE Technical Training in Colorado
I teach an Alternative Cooperative Education (ACE) class at Chaparral High School in Colorado that is printing its way to a bright future. My at-risk students are practicing life skills while running a digital printing shop, and with a little help from me and their state-of-the-art Roland printer/cutter, they are making their dreams come true.
Last summer, my Career and Technical Director, Glen March, challenged me to develop a business idea that would "make it real" for the ACE students. At Chaparral (part of Douglas County School District), we ask our at-risk students to participate in a traditional curriculum. With the challenges they already face, school is not necessarily a priority for them. They may drop out, go to an alternative program in our district, or finally go through GED process. They are only with me one or two periods each day, so I focus on making our lessons applicable to real life.
I tried to come up with an idea that would be interesting to all of us. A friend of mine does vinyl lettering--little things for your wall. I thought that might be a good place to start and purchased a vinyl cutter for our class.
Last September, our class worked with Sean McGraw, executive director of the Douglas County Education Foundation (DCEF), to write a business plan. Once the plan was in place, the students had to apply for jobs at their start-up company. Their application process included an interview with me and another teacher. I have two ACE classes, each with 21 to 22 students, and each class is represented by a CEO. The other members of the executive team are a vice president, a director of sales, a director of marketing, a production director, and a director of human resources.
The students started out by learning to make letters with the vinyl cutter and began producing banners for the school. Along the way I wove in life skills lessons, and reminded them that, "This is real money; we're going to produce real products and invoice real customers, and provide real customer service." That's where my vision stopped. Then the kids took over talking about how to expand the business.
Seeing the interest the students were taking in their new venture, Sean Schott from Denco Sales suggested taking the class on a field trip. We invited district Superintendent Jim Christensen to accompany the class to Fineline Graphics, a local graphics and design shop. While there, the group saw a Roland printer producing an image of a woman's face. The kids were fascinated by the size and photographic quality of colors in the image. They said, "We can do that. We should get one of those, Mrs. B!'"
