Research Paper
Inclusive School Store
Senior Project: Creating a School Store that all students can work in
Danielle Hopkins
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Many high schools across the United States are looking for ways to engage all of their students in activities that will prepare them for the real world. While traditional classroom settings and subjects have value for young adults, it is also important that students gain the skills they will need to use in the “real world,” or workplace environments that are not similar to a classroom, whether that be a retail store, office environment or a laboratory. It is also important that schools provide the same opportunities to all of their students no matter the students ability levels, whether physical or intellectual. My goal in my project and research has been to create an environment where students of all ability levels feel included and which also serves as a learning tool to these students by teaching them skills they will need once they leave high school.
The idea of a school store is one that has been proven to help students gain the skills they will need to be contributing members of society. School stores are a great tool for business, marketing, accounting, and entrepreneurial students, as well as students who need job experience. A school store teaches student how to market products to their peers, allowing them to gain skills in communication and persuasion (Raymond Geddes: The Benefits of School Stores), and teaches students how to balance books, count change, determine the percent markup for merchandise and figure out the amount needed to buy more goods. It is one of the best ways to utilize the skills students learn in the classroom, and apply them to situations they will face once they leave school. Students in a school store must deal with cash, shortages, overages, inventory issues, and customer complaints; in short it teaches students how to problem solve like they will have to once they leave the school environment (Education World, School Store Teaches Lifelong skills).
Not only do school stores act as a learning tool for the students who work in it, but they benefit the entire school community as well. A school store will hopefully in turn generate enough of a profit to support school clubs or trips to help further students’ education, and to expand the school store to be able to include more students in the business. A store also provides students with a convenient location to purchase school supplies while supporting the school community. Lastly, school stores promote school spirit by selling merchandise with the school name or logo (Handbook for the Operations of School Stores). A school store is a place where students from all groups and different ability levels can come together to work on a collective project. It can serve as a place to help the wider school community become more inclusive for all its students.
Inclusiveness is something that many schools strive to create as part of their community among all their students. However, many schools have programs that separate students with either physical or intellectual disabilities from the rest of the school community. These students either need special aides or teachers to help them learn. However they are made to feel separate from the rest of the school community because they are not in the “normal” classes with the rest of the student body. Schools don't do this to make the students feel excluded; most of the time they don't have the resources to alter the other classes agendas to accommodate for these students. The result is a school that is unintentionally separated by ability levels. It is normalized in school communities to separate students by their ability levels: there are different level classes according to how hard they are, and students are put down certain “tracks” freshman year dictating what classes they will be able to take for the rest of their high school careers. Students are separated by the afterschool activities they participate in, and their respective interests. Essentially many high school communities are created by not being inclusive, and while it's ok to have different groups, it's important that students have a sense of a greater school community among their peers.
The Dr. William Henderson Inclusion School is located in Dorchester MA and serves children from early childhood through Grade 12. Their mission is to create a school environment where students from diverse ethnic, linguistic, and ability backgrounds learn in general education classrooms. Students who have disabilities learn with their nondisabled peers. The school prides itself on not only having these students learn in the same environment, but in having these students learn from each other as well. The Dr. William Henderson Inclusion School also has a school store where students of all ability levels are allowed and encouraged to work in. Their school store has students mostly in elementary school level but they are expanding to the high school. Their store is a great example of an inclusive environment that fosters educational growth for students of all ability levels.
During my junior year of high school, while in adaptive mentorship, I saw a video that inspired my entire project. The video was about a teacher who had her students with physical or intellectual disabilities create a coffee cart which they ran and sold products from for the entire school community (Class Act Coffee Cart). These students ran the entire operation, from making the coffee and treats to selling them to faculty and students. These students counted change, priced items, and developed amazing customer service skills. I wanted to help create something that could be similar for the students in our special education department.
Our school did not have a stable, easily accessible place for students and school community members to purchase merchandise to show their school pride. So I set out to create a school store in which the Special Education students would be able to work. When I started my project I imagined myself spending more time with the students in the special education department every day. However I realized that the act of creating a school store is a huge project within itself. I found out that in order for them to have this store at its full potential I had to dedicate most of my time to creating it. I had little to no business experience or training before starting this project. However I have learned the ins and outs in creating a school store by embarking on this project.
The first step in creating the school store was getting our project and our budget approved by the Principal. I worked with 3 other students; Rose Capobianco, Louise McDonald, and Jacob Peters, along with Mr. Jakusik, the entrepreneur teacher throughout the entire project. We first created a project proposal to present to the principal on what we hoped to accomplish with the school store as well as our projected budget. We had to have data and research to back up the claims we made in our proposal, so we learned quite a bit about market research. We created a survey asking when students would like the store open, how much they would pay for certain items, and what the best merchandise to carry would be. We also researched how other school stores around the Cape have fared with their merchandise and hours of operation. In our proposal we identified our team, the money we had left over from the previous school store 15 years ago, and how we planned to use it. The proposal taught us a lot about public speaking and really having a clear plan for the store, but also knowing it would probably change along the way.
After we presented our idea to the principal and got what we wanted to do with the school store approved, we set forth on the task of buildout. I didn't even think of things like slatwall, or where we would have our extra inventory. The room we are having the store in is 6ft wide by about 15ft long. It’s an interesting space to work in and we ran into some problems figuring out the dimensions for the fixtures in the store. Since this store is going to be an inclusive environment, we have to make sure that a person in a wheelchair can fit behind the display case and maneuver around the store. We also ran into some problems with making sure the store isn’t too cramped. Since it is only 6ft wide if we were to have waterfalls on either side that are a foot long people would only have 4 ft to maneuver around. This part of the project had been difficult for me specifically because it is a lot of planning out and thinking ten steps ahead, as opposed to just immediately doing things for the store.
As we were working on starting the store and getting ready for the opening I was also focusing on the inclusiveness of the store. This project has definitely developed differently than I originally thought it would. While I have been researching how business work with employees who had disabilities, I haven't been able to really work with the students in our school who have similar disabilities. Around Valentine's Day I spent the day at Chilmark Chocolates, a store on Martha’s Vineyard that hires people of all ability levels, observing and learning about their business model. I got the chance to speak to one of the owners and talk to her about what I hope to accomplish in the school store. A lot of the systems she uses for all of her employees are things we were exploring for our own store. Essentially Chilmark Chocolates’ mission statement is that they are a business that wants people from all walks of life to be able to work in and be customers of the store. They also stress that none of the employees are “supervisors” for those who may have disabilities; all employees are in an equal field. I had a great time learning about their business model that day.
I also got information on how schools have modeled their inclusiveness through Julie Schmidt, the department head for special education at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. Ms. Schmidt provided me with information on Wynne Freed. Ms. Freed and Ms. Schmidt both also worked at Chilmark Chocolates throughout their careers, Ms. Schmidt for 17 years and Mrs. Freed since they opened. Ms. Freed is an occupational therapist who helped to create the inclusive school store for the Dr. William Henderson k-12 inclusion school. This store was created for most elementary school age students, but they are working on making a model for high schoolers. At this school the store is run by Ms. Freed as an occupational therapy tool unlike the model I am hoping to have where the business department and Best Buddies program work together. Similarly to Chilmark Chocolates, Ms. Freed created a system where students had to go through multiple steps to identify the items, how much they cost and what the change back would be through shapes and pictures. They have a huge poster where all of the items are listed with tags that have the prices of each item. The employee has to take the tag to the cash register and identify how much the item costs. They also make sure the items are priced so that the students have to practice giving back their peers complex change. Their store is called the Hawks Nest and at the store occupational and speech therapist will often use the time the employees work in the store as part of their therapy for an authentic experience.
While researching about inclusiveness, we put the order in for the slatwall and figured out what fixtures we need for build out we started working on our inventory. Our original budget for inventory was a little off: we didn't realize how much each piece of merchandise would cost and how many sizes we would need. We are starting off with long and short sleeve shirts, sweatpants and sweatshirts. Through our resourcefulness, we were able to get $1000 extra dollars through other budgets and a donation. Figuring out the inventory was probably the hardest part, and the whole team would butt heads often on what we wanted the designs, colors and pricing of the merchandise to be. However we had focus groups and asked them what they thought would be best for the products and gave our opinions on our preferences. We hopefully have reached a design that the whole school will like and will be popular among our customers. We are having the design class Mr. Baer teaches come up for some logos for the actual store, The 111 MVRHS Pride Store, said the one eleven MVRHS pride store. I learned that sometimes there really can be too many cooks in the kitchen and it took us a long time to settle on a lot of the design and logo decisions.
The hardest part of the project has definitely been figuring out how this will be sustainable next year, and which group of students will be in charge of it. We are planning on having the store open Tuesdays and Thursdays before and after school, and during C and G period lunch. The special education students can’t work before or after school because of the bus schedules, so we had to make sure it was also open during school. One of my biggest fears for the project is that down the road the vision of this store being inclusive will be skewed and only students in the business department will be able to work in it. I am having the club Best Buddies be a part of the school store and having buddies work in the school store together to ensure that the special education department stays a part of the store. Once the store is finished, there will be a manual of sorts about operation of the store and the mission behind creating it. As the store expands we can make it so more students can work at a time and focus on specific skills, like just greeting customers, or just ringing up orders in the same way the Henderson k-12 inclusion school store does. This store can also help serve as the life skills department expands their transition program to help students who have aged out of the program or who almost have by allowing them to come back to the school part time to work in the store and gain the skills they will need in the real world.
Working on the school store has been a tiring and amazing experience. I’ve really enjoyed working with the people in the entrepreneur class and gaining the skills a small business owner needs. This project has taught me that I have a passion for many business skills that I wish I could have had the chance to develop earlier in high school. However I’m even more happy that this project will continue for years to come and continue being a space where everyone at the school feels welcome to be a part of. By promoting school spirit and having it be accommodating so all students can be apart of the store, this place can serve as a catalyst for the rest of the school’s inclusiveness. I’m hoping this project inspires other parts of the school to become more inclusive as well and create a greater sense of a school community.