The Power of Education and Community Collaboration
Recently featured in an article in the Watauga Democrat, Little Saps is honored to have had the opportunity to work alongside Caitlin Ellis' sixth-grade math class, and we're immensely grateful for their valuable contributions to our business.
On the morning of Friday, Jan. 26, Carrie McClain, owner of Little Saps, met with her “board of advisers” — Caitlin Ellis’ sixth-grade math class at Hardin Park School.
The students arrived to class dressed to impress, with some opting to don ties and button-up shirts. They greeted McClain with hearty smiles and a firm handshake, as is customary in the business world.
The students, immersed in the sixth-grade math curriculum, presented to McClain to help her create pricing for a new line of products she plans to launch on her online store, which sells gift trees or “little saps.”
“I think it’s a wonderful project,” McClain said. “Because a lot of kids will be in business one day, and having some of those foundations, such as knowing how business works and how to price things, is certainly not something that I had.”
As part of the project, the students were using their newly acquired knowledge of fractions, decimals, and percentages and how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide them to come up with prices for McClain’s products.
Students factored in the cost of shipping, marketing, labor, and costs related to caring for the plants to come up with wholesale, retail, and online pricing. They then took these prices and used their knowledge of percentages to show how McClain could offer discounts and sales to her customers while remaining profitable.
While the students may have been learning math with Mrs. Ellis, they also learned about business, economics and interpersonal skills through the project.
“It’s an invaluable skill set,” McClain said. “It’s a skill that I wish I had learned in school because it relates so well to the real world. They were taking this seriously. I had kids coming up to me excited and telling me that they were working on my project. They were super sweet. Some of them came up with some great business strategies. One group even presented it to me based on profit margin, which is exactly what you want to know.”
Ellis said the idea began forming when she attended a week-long professional development retreat in Ocracoke. She said the week’s theme was teaching teachers how to incorporate real-world project-based learning in their classrooms using the state’s standard curriculum. Upon returning home, Ellis and McClain began talking, and the idea took root. “I was thinking of ways I could make the subject matter a little deeper so it would stick with them and help them remember,” Ellis said. “I think money is the easiest way for students to comprehend decimals, because that’s what we deal with.” Ellis said she tries to have experts talk to her students, including her husband, who is a manager at a clothing retailer at a corporate level. She said he came to talk about the store’s products, where they get them, how they sell them, and he took the time to talk to the kids one-on-one.
“He asked them, ‘Before this project, raise your hand if you were interested in business,’ and maybe five of them raised their hand,” Ellis said. “He was like, ‘Now that you’ve worked on this and have seen what you can do, even as an 11- and 12-year-old, now what do you think about going into the business world?’ and the majority of them raised their hand. It was so neat to see.”
As far as incorporating the students’ hard work into her business, McClain said she will definitely make use of their input.
“As a small business owner, I don’t have a lot of people to talk through these things with,” McClain said. “I am absolutely going to take their suggestions. They were my board of advisers.”
Article and Photos by Luke Barber
View The Article Here
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