Not only that, but experience can provide things to look back on and learn from, an opportunity for fast growth, and a tool to build your portfolio. 

Yup, I said portfolio. Even at a very young age, the experiences that your child has today can translate into real-world skills that are appealing to employers. 

That’s one of the reasons we hold a business fair each year where students create their own businesses and have to actually sell their products to real people. It requires start-up costs that they have to pay back while also striving for a profit. They have to figure out their brand and how to make it appealing to others. They need to create a product and price it to sell but also base that price on quality and time put into making it. 

If a young person entering the workforce already has experience creating value and making a profit, they’re already that much more ahead than their competition. 

It’s not just creating their own business that can be beneficial. They could hold down a job. 

Options are limited for children due to child labor laws, but that just means a little bit of creativity is required. 

They could create a business mowing the neighbor’s lawns regularly. They can offer cleaning services to family friends. 

Even if they aren’t making money, they are still obtaining value from having a responsibility that they must tend to regularly. It creates discipline and instills the habit of showing up. 

We work jobs and duties into every studio. Every student has a job to do for cleanup at the end of the day. It’s why we don’t employ janitors. Many students are elected as leaders who the other students report to on their goals or other assignments. The older students can also have bigger jobs to do. 

We have had two middle school students and a high school student take on teaching choir to the lower elementary students. We also have high schoolers and middle schoolers who help the lower grade levels with their academics. 

As we continue to grow as a school and community, we hope to create more opportunities for more students to take on roles that traditional schools would often delegate to administrative employees. We realize that in order for people to find what they have a calling for, they need to be able to discover through doing it.