Escaping Endless Adolescence. Why are teens growing up so slowly?

I just found an interesting Newsweek article written by Po Bronson reviewing the book Escaping Endless Adolesence. The book's authors, Dr. Joe Allen and Dr. Claudia Worrell Allen, asks the question, "Why are teens growing up so slowly?" In other words, why does it take teens today so long to mature and be ready for the world? Their answer to this question is reflected in the current education reform discussion.

Structural changes in our school system is part of the national conscious when it comes to education reform, whether it's extending the school day, extending the school year, block scheduling, starting the school day later, or any of the other ideas that have been tossed around, it's been part of the mainstream conversation. What these authors have concluded is structural change is needed and should provide real-life, hands on experience that better prepare our children and offer them options to explore their talents, creativity and maturity.

"We place kids in schools together with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other kids typically from similar economic and cultural backgrounds. We group them all within a year or so of one another in age. We equip them with similar gadgets, expose them to the same TV shows, lessons, and sports. We ask them all to take almost the exact same courses and do the exact same work and be graded relative to one another. We give them only a handful of ways in which they can meaningfully demonstrate their competencies. And then we’re surprised they have some difficulty establishing a sense of their own individuality... We don’t give teens enough ways to take risks that are productive.”

At Urban School Foundation we're trying to provide this opportunity through entrepreneurship education. We're creating a program in which students actually start a business and run it. All proceeds from this business are then donated to the school program of their choice.

Read more about our program here.

Business Promo Videos

Urban School Foundation takes a look back on our first year of our entrepreneurship education program. We had some really creative businesses. Here are the promotion videos for the top two business plans:

ROOKIE'S

DOGGY STYLE

Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour!

This past Friday our Schurz Young Entrepreneurs students were invited by Junior Achievement to take part in the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour. We all learned so much from speakers Arel Moodie,  Adam Witty and Duane Spires.

All the speakers on the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour are young entrepreneurs under 30 who have made their first million dollars. These speakers gave our entrepreneurs sound advice on how to find the confidence in ourselves to start a business. They also offered pearls of wisdom through personal and business stories. We learned that when you're starting a business you should:

1. Commit
2. Learn the proper technique
3. Find a mentor
4. Take action!

And though we were learning, we had so much fun doing it! A great thanks to the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour, all our speakers and Junior Achievement.

(USF Young Entrepreneurs dance off to win Arel Moodie's new inspirational book)

From the mouths of BABES...

Ahhhh, primary market research - a great excuse to talk to that guy or girl you like so much! Continuing on our marketing theme, Schurz students are conducting surveys to learn what magnet products their peers would be most interested in purchasing.

Why magnets? In addition to writing their own business plans, the class is starting a business as a group with the guidance of Kevin Rutter and Luciana Tiberio. The goal is to manufacture magnets that would do well in the market that exists at Schurz HS - hands on experience starting and running a business. As a lesson in social responsibility, all proceeds will be donated to a school organization of their choosing.

Here's an example of a magnet that might be assembled and sold:

4. The adhesive with vinyl lettering is placed on the magnet. The excess magnet material is cut, and the product is packaged.

3. Vinyl lettering is placed on the adhesive

2. The colored vinyl is kiss-cut with a design. Then, the excess vinyl is picked out, leaving only the kiss-cut design.

1. Raw magnet material

"She said Pee!"

Yes, I did! Our Schurz High School students are learning about creating a good marketing mix using the four P's - Price, Product, Placement and Promotion. Heading into their 7th month of our Young Entrepreneurs program, our students continue to write business plans for their business ideas, and they're learning about how to get the word out about their products and services.



After learning about different methods of market research we watched The Merchants of Cool, a documentary that explores how MTV discovers what's cool in popular teen culture. Girls learned that their customer profile was labeled a midriff, the boys were mooks and by the end EVERYONE understood how they were being marketed-to.


We also learned about how marketing and branding has evolved, and the how and why they identify with one brand lifestyle and not another. Frontline's The Persuaders was a great way to illustrate these topics.

Entrepreneurs in Teaching Entrepreneurship

We wanted to share a little with you about our entrepreneurship education program, Future Entrepreneurs. Urban School Foundation was started with the intention of providing Chicagoland's homeless and disadvantaged students with the tools to build a brighter future, and this program is a great example of how we plan on doing this.

We're working closely with Illinois 2009-2010 Teacher of the Year, Kevin Rutter, and Schurz High School in Chicago to develop and deliver a hands-on, experience-based curriculum in starting, running and managing a business, starting with the junior class finance students.

Class started on September 7th, and since then students been exploring their talents, learning about different types of businesses and recognizing opportunities for capitalizing on their skills. They've also heard about the sacrifices it took to start a business by local entrepreneur, Bob Tucker Jr, and visited and asked questions about his business. All this is building up to the start of writing and developing a strong business plan.

With this program we hope not only to build confidence and provide them with the skills they need to build a business for themselves one day, but also to better understand business and thereby be better employees. A benefit to not only their lives, but our collective future.

Stay tuned to find out what ideas the students come up on their adventure in entrepreneurship. Read more about our Future Entrepreneurs program on our website, www.urbanschoolfoundation.org.

Our first blog post! We're so excited to get our non profit up and running and to help students.

We've just been approved as a corporation by the State of Illinois, and we're in the process of acquiring our 501c3 status.

So, who are we and what do we do? Well, we're caring community members, small business owners and former teachers that are dedicated to doing our part to provide low-income students in the Chicagoland area an equal opportunity to a quality education and a brighter future.

We're starting small with our focus on two projects. We're raising money and reaching out to donors to help us get school supplies to the kids who need them most - homeless and low-income students. Did you know that there are over 14,000 homeless students attending Chicago public schools alone? We're trying to get them what they need to be active participants in their education with our Pack 2 School program. Changing the world one backpack at a time. Read more about that at www.pack2school.org. 

We're also passionate about charting an entrepreneurial path in our student's future. Working with the 2010 Illinois Teacher of the Year, we're in the process of developing a hands-on curriculum that prepares students for modern entrepreneurship, challenging them to explore their strengths and talents and thinking about how they can leverage those skills to start a dorm room (or home) business.

Thanks to local manufacturing partner, CDI Corp, this year Carl Schurz High School students attending the Academy of Finance II class will have the opportunity to actually start and run their own small business! We'll keep you posted on their progress and products as the class develops. Until then, learn more about this program at www.futurentrepreneurs.org.

So what's with the blog?

With this blog we're excited to bring you interesting news, videos and pictures about the education issues we care about - form the serious, to the silly and ridiculous. From time to time we'll be give you updates on our programs and events. We'd love your thoughts on these issues, and we invite you to also check out our discussion forums. We invite you to continue reading our blog.