In EHHS we have many important classes that are designed to help students’ future careers. One of these classes is Mr. Walraven’s Small Business Management Class. His class teaches students how to start, run, and grow your own small business that can set you up for a business career outside of school.
This class is part of the school’s Business Pathway and can also be taken as a capstone. In the first semester, 11th and 12th grade students learn the basics of starting a business, including how marketing works, how to be a startup owner, and how to organize a structure like a proprietorship or an LLC. In the second semester, students learn how to incorporate all the concepts they have learned and use it to create a business plan. The first step is posting marketing surveys to see what products are in demand in the local area to produce a full business plan. The students currently in the class mostly have service-based businesses like landscaping, cleaning services, custom reptile enclosures, pet grooming, and video editing.
The overall main goal of this class is for students to be able to deploy their business into the real world by the end of the semester. Also, the students can learn important life skills as well. For example, Mr. Walraven, the teacher of the class, says, “I think it’ll help them better understand how a business works and how it is not easy. But it gives them a lot of self ownership and accountability to complete a task and see the fruits of their labor.” Then he also proceeds to discuss how the FBLA club relates to his small business class by saying, “FBLA is a little more general. It’s more like sales, human resources, customer service, reaching out to businesses, seeing if they would like to team up with us, seeing if they have anything to offer.” This shows how Mr. Walraven’s background in running the FBLA club, which is the Future Business Leaders of America, adds benefits to his small business class because of the experience he gains.
Mr. Walraven discusses how owning his own business, Nation Baseball Academy in Branford CT, makes him the rightful person to teach this class, “I think with anything, experience doing something is the best teacher and the best way to learn. And then when you have gone through it yourself, you can then take those experiences and teach others. Basically, you know, it’s gonna take a lot of hard work. It’s gonna take a lot of time. It’s going to take money. You’re going to need to solve problems on your own. There’s no one there to help you. But the goal of the class is for students to learn if you are interested in doing something, and you want to do it, and you love to do it, it’ll work. It’s just what you’re doing. It’s just something you want to do, as opposed to being told by somebody else. It’s something you actually have pride in, because you built it. And so when future students in this class wake up and go to work every day, and deploy their businesses, they can enjoy it. So, I enjoy teaching here; then, I enjoy going to teach baseball and softball.”
With years of experience in business and education, Mr. Walraven, the Small Business Management teacher helps students understand what it truly takes to start and run a business. He has two master’s degrees, an undergraduate degree in business management and accounting, and a master’s degree in business administration, as well as his own business. Overall, Mr. Walraven’s Small Business Management class gives students the knowledge and confidence they need to turn their ideas into reality.
