In Wood County, WV, Blennerhassett Elementary School, Blennerhassett Middle School, Greenmont Elementary School, and Franklin Elementary School received their America’s Entrepreneurial Schools (AES) designation in recognition of their commitment to providing entrepreneurship education to every student in their building in a single year. The National Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education (EntreEd) awarded the schools with the banners and designations as entrepreneurial schools for the 2017-2018 school year.

At Greenmont Elementary School, students from PreK – 5th grades collaborated to create a popsicle sale including design, flavor naming, branding, advertising, purchasing of supplies, point of sale, customer service and counting proceeds. All students participated and had a role in the event.

At Blennerhassett Elementary School, guest speaker Rick Rubin presented the fifth graders strategies and techniques associated with effectively running a food truck business. Mr. Rubin reviewed how to calculate profit/loss, price per serving size and margins along with customer service skills. The fifth grade’s mission was then to teach students in Kindergarten through 4th grade the needed skill sets to operate a lemonade stand efficiently and effectively. The fifth grade developed a PowerPoint presentation and shared what they had learned with each grade level in the auditorium. A question and answer session followed each presentation. Grade-specific entrepreneurship-focused mathematics lessons were developed for the whole school. As a culminating event, the fifth grade made and served lemonade to the entire student body with 100 percent of the profits donated to the Parkersburg Humane Society.

Blennerhassett Middle School used their advisory time to discuss entrepreneurship. They initially planned activities that introduced the concept of entrepreneurship and what an entrepreneur is. Students then brainstormed jobs they could have as entrepreneurs and wrote business plans for the future businesses they would like to create.

At Franklin Elementary, students participated in a variety of school-based businesses including popsicle sales, hot chocolate sales, student crafts, and student-created food businesses.

All four schools are part of the EntreEd America’s Entrepreneurial Schools Initiative. Schools in Wood County are supported by the Ross Family Foundation which supports participation in the initiative for Wood and Doddridge County, WV schools.

For more information contact Gene Coulson, Executive Director of Entre-Ed at gcoulson@entre-ed.org.