At Tappan Zee High School, students in Darrell Flynn’s Entrepreneurship course manage virtually every aspect of Z-Mart, the very popular school store, which operates daily during lunch periods. To keep the business growing, “department” teams–which include management, marketing, finance–identify opportunities for improvement and develop strategies to achieve key goals.
During weekly check-in presentations, department teams share updates and progress, and seek input from other teams. “These presentations serve as a way for each department team to share the knowledge and experience they’ve obtained before they rotate to another one,” explained Flynn. “It holds students accountable for their work in the store, exposes them to the work of other departments and builds strategic planning skills. The format helps our students discover how to simultaneously work toward department and organizational goals collaboratively and to use direct feedback based on others’ experiences, observations and ideas to innovate.”
