For the last 7 years, I’ve had a close connection with a school in my neighborhood, Cathedral High School. It’s a philanthropy-based school for boys and girls from underserved communities in Boston. Every Sunday morning in the winter, I’ve run a youth basketball clinic that raises money to fund scholarships there.
So, it’s a special place for me. And over the years, I’ve become friends with the Head of School and the Athletic Director and Basketball Coach. (My oldest son is even the team’s ball boy.)
This fall, when the Head of School knew I was transitioning from my company, he encouraged me to teach a class on entrepreneurship. He has an innovative and inspiring vision for the school. It’s based on the concept of developing students into leaders in the new economy by teaching kids experientially, or through “applied learning”.
It’s a vision to help kids that you just can’t help but believe in and want to contribute to. So, just before Thanksgiving, I committed to teaching a class.
And since today was the first day, I’m no longer just an aspiring miller and bagel-pretzel-tortilla maker. I’m a teacher, too.
I’m teaching a one-hour class every Friday for the next 5 months. Most importantly, I’m committed to making my kids part of this real-life, real-time journey to build One Mighty Mill. If I pull it off, it’ll be a truly unique experience for the kids to learn and build alongside someone who is actually starting a business (and someone who has done it before). If I’m an effective teacher, I’ll make them feel like they’re partners in the creation of a business and consumer brand.
I designed the curriculum to be aligned with the work we’ve done so far to start One Mighty Mill and the work we’ll do over the coming months. So, it includes things like competitive analysis, brand design, product R&D, business plan development, fundraising, and real estate selection. For the course materials, I’m using the actual documents we’ve created and will develop. Those documents will be brought to life with visits from our chef, designer, lawyer, and architect. And to make sure it’s truly experiential learning, we’ll also get outside the classroom. We’ll visit Whole Foods to research competitors and meet with a store manager. To close it out big, our end of semester project is a retail pop-up event to actually have the kids market and sell our products. The plan is to partner with a local restaurant and sell One Mighty Mill bagels during a morning breakfast event in May.
For homework, I want assignments to be more attuned to the digitized, modern business and to reinforce creation, risk-taking, and accountability. So, I’m making every student keep an online blog. (Clearly, I was inspired by this one.) Every week, their deliverables are posts with their own commentary on an assigned topic. Then, every student is required to post a photo with the link to their blog entry on their own instagram pages. The goal is to learn by acting like an entrepreneur. It’s about having your own, original point of view and the courage to express your thoughts in writing and to share them with the world.
Anyway, today was my first class and we started strong.
I set the tone early by naming the course, “A Real Intro to Entrepreneurship: Rebellion, Innovation & Idealism” and by pumping a Rage Against The Machine song when they walked in.
I got next! 