One of the joys of teaching high school is the fun of putting students into real world settings. I got my first lesson when I had the Management & Entrepreneurship class. A third quarter assignment was to go through the process of creating a business. We would go through the process from inception to returning the profits to the investors. Some years we would produce products and other years we would be resellers. This was always an interesting project, Kids did really well and even a couple of those students have gone on to run their own businesses successfully. I never knew that this would cause some friction with other teachers. Part of the project required that they raised the money and gave shares in the company to investors. I thought that it would be welcomed with open arms by other teachers since it was a practical experience that relates to their future. I was a little naive and got a shock. About a week into the first year I was talking to a teacher from another department and we started talking about the process of raising money to start a business and then selling a product for a profit. The teacher asked where we were donating the profits. I simply said that the profits go back to the investors. Well, that was a mistake. This teacher goes off on me that as students and teachers we should help others and that it was abhorrent to make a profit in a public school.
I was taken aback and had to think before I spoke. You would think that I would have done okay since I paused before I answered. I could only think of one response and that just turned up the heat. I said that I was teaching business and not altruism. You would have thought i just set fire to their hair. They screamed at me that I was doing untold harm to the kids and violating our mission as teachers. To hear them talk I was the devil incarnate. They went down and tattled on me to the principal. I got called down and was asked to explain what I was doing with my class and what I was teaching. I told him nervously and then told him about my take on the encounter. My principal sat and thought about it for a minute. He then told me to keep on doing what I do and teach the kids how to run a business. I just avoided that teacher for a couple of years. The good news is that I turned a profit every year we were in business and returned a profit to the investors.