While a ton of aspiring entrepreneurs graduate college in hopes of landing a job in a start up business, a new class here at Upper Arlington High School is flipping the script and teaching students how to build a start up themselves.
Incubator is a new entrepreneurial class that allows for students to collaborate with other students to create their own start up business. Even more, at the end of the year, students will have the opportunity to promote their business idea to real world investors that are willing to invest real money into these start up ideas. The main teachers that will be teaching this new course will be business teachers Kyle Davis and Eva Frustaci. The goal for this class is to allow students to get a first hand experience into life, whether it is through success or struggles.
“Our main priorities are to get students to look into the real world instead of just learning things in a classroom, memorizations for a test and really see what it’s like to work with a team, build something from the ground up, deal with failure, and build that resilience,” Davis said.
This class is for students who truly want to learn new life skills outside typical classroom memorization. Students are allowed free rein over what they desire for their business to accomplish and promote.
Even before anyone has taken Incubator, junior Jacob Guy explained that he wants to take this class as he is interested in pursuing a passion in the business world.
“I think that the building of the products and the pitching of it is a valuable experience to have. It gives me experience that I wouldn’t otherwise get until I got to the real world,” Guy said.
Even without feedback from other students that have taken the course, Guy is still passionate about his dreams in pursuing business and taking courses to help develop his skills in real world situations.
Incubator was not just a class created out of nowhere, Superintendent Robert Hunt has had experience with this program back where he used to teach at Barrington 220 Community District in northwest Chicago. Hunt mentioned how this program was a huge success at his old school, and wants to spread it into UAHS’s community.
“It became a model that was replicated throughout the country, and actually throughout the world. So I guess it inspired me to have our teachers go there and look at the program, and it was a really authentic way of teaching, learning and creating an amazing experience for our students,” Hunt said.
The teachers have spent time learning about this program to make sure they can help teach the students in the best and most efficient way possible. This class allows for the students at UAHS to be able to leverage the opportunities available to them, and work with the well educated community of UA.
“We’re very fortunate to live in a community where there are experts in fields at very high levels and we’re in a place where we can kind of leverage those and bring those in. That’s the most exciting piece for me, is to bring in that partnership with community members that have success, that have an interest in interacting with and inspiring young people,” Hunt said.
Incubator is currently set as a course for juniors and seniors to take and start thinking about and creating a start up. However, there will be a class after this called Accelerator, where the students who got funding for their company in the class Incubator, are then set to use the money they have received from investments and start running their business. Accelerator currently is not available for students to take at UAHS, but if Incubator becomes a success, Accelerator will be added shortly after.
Incubator will not have any required prerequisites, but in order to take the Accelerator class, students would first be required to complete Incubator. For the students who may be unfortunate enough to not receive funding for their business, they are still allowed to take Accelerator, as long as the prerequisite Incubator is completed, to join and help other companies. Upcoming juniors and seniors who want to start their entrepreneurial journeys are able to sign up for Incubator next year.
