For the past few weeks, your child has been learning about basic economic concepts. To apply this knowledge, s/he performed some market analysis, brainstormed a good or service that meets the wants/needs of our target audience, and wrote a business pitch to convince the audience that this idea should become reality for our marketplace event. You’ve likely heard about this unit from your child or through our weekly emails. We’ve already heard from some of you wondering why your child has been asking you for loans or if they can borrow some appliance for a school project. At this point in the process, students are in teams of four or five students and are one week away from selling their service or good at the Milton Middle School Marketplace on June 7th, 2017:
This is where you may or may not come in. If your child approaches you for money, supplies, donations, labor, etc. in order to help him or her with this project, please keep the following in mind:
- As an investor, you have every right to request more information from your child regarding his/her business plan. Groups have developed their business plans over the past few weeks, and will continue to over the next five days.
- If you do choose to support your child in some way, first of all, thank you. Secondly, you have every right to expect to be repaid for your investment. We will ask students to keep track of these investments in order to do so. Thirdly, be aware as you enter this arrangement that you are taking a risk and these businesses may or may not turn a profit.
- If you will be supporting your child’s group by lending items, machines, ingredients, supplies, expertise, time, etc., we expect all groups to keep track of those expenses. Even if they are donated and you do not expect to be reimbursed, students should know the worth of those in-kind donations and must account for them in order to get a true sense of their profits/losses. We encourage you to charge your child in order to give them a more realistic business experience.
- Of course, if you are asked to help in any way that you are unable or uncomfortable doing, we absolutely understand and encourage you to help your child problems solve, if necessary.
- Depending on the nature of the business group, your child may need to be making things at home, getting together with group members, working on weekends, etc. in order to create the goods or services that will be sold at the marketplace event.
Thanks for your support!
Josh Roof
Anna Rehm
Tami Koester
Caroline Woodward
