Lincoln High School Offers Entrepreneurial Education

Paw Print offers students entrepreneurial education

By Jennifer McDaniel, for the Lincoln Sentinel

A new program at Lincoln High School is not only giving students a chance to gain real-world experience, but an opportunity to pay it forward.

The program, Paw Print, is a screen-printing business operated solely by high-school students. Led by business instructor Nikki Flinn and journalism instructor Jason Curtis, students are in charge of every aspect of the enterprise – from business and sales to final billing and invoicing.
But that isn’t all. All printing, graphic design and production services are also overseen by students.

“The main reason that we decided to start the program is the benefits that the students will gain from a class like this,” Flinn said. “The students are learning real business skills, workplace and communication. The students are learning to trust each department to complete their task so they can do theirs. Each student has a job that they are responsible for, and many of the jobs are intertwined with each other. Without one student doing their job, an entire production can fail. That has taught our students some powerful communication skills.”

But among the lessons learned, Flinn said, the most powerful are those about giving back.

“For every product made, the students are going to give back $1 to either the school, a program, the community or an organization in the community that the students will choose,” she said.

For more information on how they came up with the idea read here.