At Miami Palmetto Senior High, among various fields, many students take advantage of the opportunities to pursue their interests in merchandising, finance and marketing among other entrepreneurship roles.
Dr. Caroline Raffington offers her students a chance to explore the many fields of business, not only through her Principles of Entrepreneurship class but also through the Junior Achievement Company Program.
Junior Achievement USA — a non-profit dedicated to teaching high school students about financial literacy, career readiness and entrepreneurship — created various entrepreneurial programs such as JA Company to encourage students to solve real-world problems within their community.
At MPSH, a volunteer from the organization with industry experience comes once a month to offer Raffington’s students startup guidance for their companies.
“One of the first things they had to do was brainstorm different ideas for their business,” Raffington said. “Once the group made suggestions for possible businesses, then they went through a process of eliminating the ones that weren’t feasible based on the resources required, the time frame and then they all voted on the final.”
Last year, the JA students had only one student-led company, administered through Mylene Exposito’s Business Ownership class. Her students created “Strictly Panther Business,” and went classroom to classroom selling MPSH-branded stickers and lanyards. After collecting a considerable amount of profit, they donated the funds to the Coral Restoration Foundation.
This year is Raffington’s first year with JA, teaching three different periods of the Principles of Entrepreneurship, where each class has its business idea and company.
Sophie Feldman, a junior in Raffington’s third period, is a member of the two-person leadership team that oversees the management of the 14-week class corporation.
“‘[Leadership] does a lot of managing everyone and making sure everything goes according to our time frame. We all have to be very collaborative and use open-minded thinking,” Feldman said. “We are doing a clothing brand for school merchandise. Our Instagram for it is @truepclothing, and all of that stuff will come in a few weeks from production.”
Each company has four different departments: management/leadership, marketing, supply and finance. Junior Ava Reshefsky has been an active member of the JA program for two years, and as a member of her first-period class’ leadership team, feels excited to lead her peers to create their own company and watch them discover their strong suits.
“It’s providing me valuable experiences that I think I can apply to my future, and showing us how to work collectively with others as a team and as a company,” Reshefsky said. “Obviously we all come with our own abilities and strengths and weaknesses, so we have to work together to build the company and make it successful.”
