New website opens wider market for Edgewood student businesses

The Richland-Bean Blossom Community School Corp. has created a new way for the community to purchase student-made items and donate to programs, including the school lunch fund.

Edgewood students create items ranging from cutting boards and keychains in the Innovative Learning Center to water bottles and beanies featuring the Edgewood logo in the Design Lab. There are plans to add online ordering from Coffee Corral also. The school district also accepts donations to a school program of your choice or pay for a student's school lunch for an entire semester.

Student-run businesses at Edgewood

The EdgeShop is a student-run business at Edgewood Junior High where students work together to decide what designs are best, how they will make those designs and if those designs are affordable to make. Some of their products include picture frames, ornaments and Edgewood merch.

The Innovative Learning Center gives Edgewood High School students real-world experiences in digital design, marketing, manufacturing and product design. The proceeds are put back into the student-run businesses for materials, supplies and equipment.

Lisa Wilson, project lead at ILC, said her job is to assist the students with their projects in the student-run businesses. Wilson said the purpose of the ILC is to serve the classroom, the campus and the community.

“This is a new thing for us,” Wilson said. “If you get a new piece of equipment in, rather than me spending hours training, I have the students training. They are helping start this whole business.”

Wilson said the environmental club wanted to raise money to make an outdoor bench, so they made winter wreaths that ended up selling out in a day. She said they made a pattern maker and foraged grape vines and greenery for the wreaths.

“The students not only got to make and learn a skill, but they learned all those micro-decisions of running a small business,” Wilson said.

Coming soon: Coffee drink online ordering

Stacia Myers, EHS teacher and Coffee Corral lead, said a goal for the coffee shop is to create a website where people can order drinks online. She said it will be open during their resource time at school, during lunch and for extracurricular activities.

“It's not just putting it all on a website, it's taking every single item that goes into a drink, itemizing it and determining a price for it,” Myers said. "Such good life skills are being learned from this and it's been really exciting to watch students come up with different things and use different talents that they have.”

Myers emphasized Edgewood's business programs are an opportunity for all students and not just those who are interested in business. She said no matter what students are interested in, there is a role for them.

“I have two managers that are quite different, but they work so well together because one is very number driven and the other one is more creative,” Myers said. “To see them collaborate and the things that they come up with together is what every educator dreams of seeing.”

Jennifer Barrett, director of teaching, learning and ready schools for Edgewood’s administration, said the new website is an investment in Edgewood students. Barrett said she has been in education for 20 years, but she has never been more excited for what they are doing at Edgewood than she has been this year.

“We are opening doors for them that have not been available to them before, and we want high school to be an experience for them,” Barrett said. “It's so much more than this online piece and how we’re selling our items, it really is what the kids are doing.”

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: RBB schools launch website for Edgewood gear, lunch fund