{"id":7539,"date":"2025-06-17T08:37:17","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T15:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/?p=7539"},"modified":"2025-06-17T08:37:17","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T15:37:17","slug":"risk-and-roadblocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/2025\/06\/17\/risk-and-roadblocks\/","title":{"rendered":"RISK AND ROADBLOCKS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teaching entrepreneurship isn\u2019t exactly in secondary teacher Todd Bakker\u2019s comfort zone. After all, he teaches courses with predetermined curriculum and objective answers such as chemistry and grade 9 science. \u201cI\u2019m not an entrepreneur beyond having a lawn mowing business as a kid,<\/em>\u201d says Todd.<\/p>\n

However, he was up for the challenge and sought to learn more about what makes this class valuable. \u201cEntrepreneurship is unique because most classes are more content laden, like chemistry,<\/em>\u201d he explains. \u201cEntrepreneurship curriculum, on the other hand, expects students to engage in entrepreneurial activities.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Not Your Usual Bake Sale<\/h2>\n

When asked how he planned the course, being that it was so different from what he usually teaches, Todd replied, \u201cI thought that students see a lot of people who live this\u2026. At the end of the day, in a good entrepreneurship course, they should have the chance to be an entrepreneur, but it should be safe enough that they can afford to fail.<\/strong><\/span><\/em>\u201d As part of the planning process, he contacted a number of business owners and applied for a significant grant from ACS\u2019 Deeper Learning Fund.<\/p>\n

His students started out learning business basics with a book study about different entrepreneurs\u2019 journeys. Then the class met with local entrepreneurs, hearing their inspiring stories as well as their advice for young entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

The final part of the course was where it got more intense. Todd encouraged the students to find something they were truly passionate about and wanted to work on daily.<\/p>\n

They paired up, made a business plan, and pitched their idea to a panel of teachers, similar to Dragon\u2019s Den. The panel determined how much funding each group received based on their pitch. Thinking that presenting their ideas would be the easy part, most of the students walked into their pitch meeting ready to get going with a business, but walked out with many questions they hadn\u2019t thought about. Questions like, \u201cIs our product available anywhere else for cheaper?<\/em>\u201d and \u201cCan we compete with businesses making this on an assembly line?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a hit right off the bat,\u201d Todd says, but it\u2019s those roadblocks that lead entrepreneurs to success.<\/span> <\/strong>After all, this isn\u2019t your usual school bake sale. Students are marketing their businesses to people in the real world, where many products are cheaper from big corporations. Once students fully understand this, the project becomes quite daunting. \u201cThey have to develop resilience,<\/em>\u201d says Todd, \u201cbecause otherwise they don\u2019t ever take that first step.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Facing Roadblocks<\/h2>\n

After the students had modified their plans and felt ready to start their business, they faced roadblock, after roadblock, after roadblock. London Krahn and Zoe Grandia launched a business selling homemade make-up bags.<\/p>\n

Their first roadblock? They didn\u2019t know how to sew.<\/p>\n

They had to learn a completely new skill, which made selling quality items quite difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cSelling them was hard at first, because the bags were not that good,<\/em><\/strong><\/span>\u201d says London with a smile. However, as time went on, London and Zoe kept practicing and their products greatly improved. \u201cIt gave me a really good idea of what building a business will be like,<\/em>\u201d reflects London.<\/p>\n

Risks…Naturally<\/h2>\n

\u201cThe weird thing about entrepreneurship,<\/em>” says Todd, “is that so many entrepreneurs never went to school for it.<\/em>\u201d Students were inspired by Hieke Morton, director of The Gathering Markit, who went through the same process of learning things on her own, while starting a non-profit grocery store.<\/p>\n

The students faced uncertainty through the journey. After receiving their funding, they bought their materials upfront, not knowing if their product would even sell.<\/p>\n

The risk was no different than any start-up business. \u201cIt\u2019s all these things they run into that are pretty natural for a business to run into<\/em>,\u201d says Todd about the challenges his students faced, \u201cbut they run into them in a safe space.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teaching entrepreneurship isn\u2019t exactly in secondary teacher Todd Bakker\u2019s comfort zone. After all, he teaches courses with predetermined curriculum and objective answers such as chemistry and grade 9 science. \u201cI\u2019m not an entrepreneur beyond having a lawn mowing business as a kid,\u201d says Todd. However, he was up for the challenge and sought to learn […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":7718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,35],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-7539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-school-vision","category-secondary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7539"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=7539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}