Six months ago, business students at New Tech High @ Coppell would have been in class taking notes and completing projects to learn about business.
Now, they run one.
SPARK, a student-led service offering enrichment courses for a variety of subjects for children in grades five through eight, also provides New Tech students with practical life skills by allowing them to run a business.
Parents can enroll their children in one course lasting seven weeks at $75, including robotics, artificial intelligence, public speaking, coding and graphic arts among others. The classes are hosted every Thursday at the New Tech campus from 4:30-5:30 p.m.
By using the New Tech campus and students as employees, SPARK mitigates several major expenses other enrichment programs possess and offer courses that are much more affordable than competitors.
The classes offer kids an opportunity to learn something new in an interactive setting while being able to socialize with their peers.
“I think a lot of the kids we have coming in are in that social stage where they’re just meeting new people and moving into middle or high school, so I think it’s a great opportunity for people to meet each other and also work with students that are like-minded,” said New Tech junior Jace Deinhammer, SPARK manager. “So it’s not just them learning by themselves, but that they get to interact and share ideas together.”
The first courses have seen 50 kids enrolled with $4,000 in revenue, enabling instructors to pay for their materials and successfully start their courses.
SPARK is spearheaded by New Tech’s business students, under the guidance of New Tech business teacher Marieke Mastebroek.
The implementation of this new business was an idea by Mastebroek to make business classes more interactive and realistic.
“Business is a funny thing to teach because it is so practical, you can only do so much by learning definitions and studying,” Mastebroek said.
The marketing for SPARK was brought about through New Tech’s marketing students, while students in business management companies took over the organization and planning. This makes classes more engaging and students more motivated to learn about these skills as they are actually applying them.
“It’s been cool to have that experience where you see kids engaged and they get it all of a sudden like ‘That’s how it is in the real world,” Mastebroek said.
SPARK instructors are also made up of students. Currently, they are all from New Tech, but in the future, this opportunity will be given to students from Coppell High School as well. Looking forward, SPARK is considering potentially paying instructors.
“If we can get to a point where we can change the business structure, we might be able to start paying these kids at some point, and then they have a job they enjoy with twice the pay of other jobs,” Mastebroek said.
To become an instructor, applicants must sit through an interview and be selected before they can start teaching. Business students also must sit through an interview before being placed into their respective roles.
So far, the classes have gone as planned, and deadlines set by the management team have been met. However, as the first sessions come to an end, SPARK looks to continue into the summer.
SPARK plans to offer online courses over the summer to people who pay for the next set of enrichment courses via a Schoology course with videos and activities curated by instructors.
“I think it would be more difficult to teach but easier to plan as I would have to do demonstrations through videos, but I still think it is a good opportunity,” said New Tech sophomore Isabella Argueta, SPARK arts and crafts instructor.
As SPARK continues to expand, it hopes to see more enrollment and plan to expand their instructor staff.
“I think it is a cool idea to have people who know what it is like to be taught this way teach these things, and I think it is going to grow and be successful,” Argueta said.
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