EHHS JAG Students Create Businesses

By Patty Damiani
As the JAG specialist at East Hartford High School, I am always looking for ways to bring the JAG competencies to life, and give students the chance to practice their communication, teamwork and leadership skills.

One way to teach my students what bosses want in an employee, I thought, was to make my students BE the bosses. So recently I created an activity in which students came up with their own businesses: Creating a logo, a dress code, and description of what they want in their workers.

Who’s the Boss? Alex Strevel (fitness club) and Yanneliz Perez (doughnut shop) tell their classmates what they are looking for in an employee.

The students then presented their business ideas to the class and had their classmates fill out applications for the businesses where they wanted to work.  As the boss, they looked over the applications and interviewed prospective employees.  The interviews were given in front of the class so they could see how others did and provide and get feedback.

I was very impressed by my students’ ingenuity in creating their businesses, and enjoyed seeing them help each other by giving positive feedback during the interview portion of the project.

Students said they enjoyed the exercise too.

“It helped me get more comfortable answering interview questions. I appreciated the critiquing so I can work on what I did wrong,” Alex Strevel said.

“I enjoyed this project because I want to own my own tattoo parlor one day,” Jordan Hernandez said.  “This made me really think about what type of employee I would want to hire in the future.”