Entrepreneurship Education Reduces Behavior Incidents in Students

Tom Isaacs is the superintendent of the Warren County Educational Service Center and his team works with over 15,000 students who struggle to adjust in traditional school environments. 

Many of these students have experienced little to no success in education which is why Tom is always on the lookout for programs that will set his students up for success.

Three years ago, Tom and I started working together to explore what would be possible with entrepreneurship education and how the program could work with the students his organization served. We knew the program would only be successful if the experience was grounded in real-world experiences.

“Stephen,” Tom said early on in the discussion. “The biggest problem I want to solve for is student behavior. We have so many student behavior issues that it makes it incredibly difficult for our paraprofessionals. If we can reduce student behavior, that would be considered a huge win.”

Tom connected me to his leadership team and we formed a task force to explore key opportunities for entrepreneurship at the Educational Service Center.  Some might refer to these "opportunities" as “problems” such as “how do we effectively do entrepreneurship in a setting where many of our students have disabilities?”

Embracing these opportunities, we started by using the process that had proved successful in over 20 private schools around the nation - we launched a class with a small group of students focused on starting a business on the campus. These students started a pizza business called Phoenix Fire Pizza and the program took off.

By the second year, Phoenix Fire Pizza was growing rapidly and entrepreneurship spread to other student programs who then began replicating the model to start new businesses. This led to an incredible surge in ideation which led to the launch of Phoenix Brew, Phoenix Fire Bakery, The Printing Pros, Coffee and Tea with TLC, and Western Woof. And every single one of these ventures is run by students who, for a variety of reasons, did not find success in traditional education.

Tom and I debriefed this entire experience in a recent podcast episode and Tom made the case that the success the students are now experiencing is directly related to the sense of ownership they now feel.

“It’s far beyond what we ever thought we’d be able to accomplish,” Tom said, reflecting on the growth of the program. “I saw data yesterday that even though there are more students in the school facility than there were last year, the number of physical restraints has dramatically decreased this year. I think it plays into, again, students being positive and having had success.”

Entrepreneurship education works and it can work in any educational environment, no matter the challenges (opportunities). The reason it works is because it is grounded in real world experiences where students develop durable skills that directly impact the success they will experience in life.

The time to start is now.

Connect with me.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST WITH TOM ISAACS

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