Business-savvy middle schoolers ready to ‘Ignite’ their ideas
By EMMA QUASNY
Senior students at Carmel High School, Claire Qu and Meg Shaffer, recently launched an initiative, Ignite, focused on teaching business concepts and skills to middle school students. This program gave students the ability to develop, propose and complete a community-focused project of their own. This year’s competition student winners proposed the idea of implementing a peer tutoring program into their school.
Ignite is a four-week business program that was held at two middle schools in the Carmel Clay School District, Clay Middle School and Creekside Middle School, last fall. Both Qu and Shaffer met in middle school and, when they got to high school, immediately recognized the benefit of learning business skills at a younger age.
“When we got to high school and started taking business classes ourselves and learning the content, we realized pretty quickly that middle schoolers could start to learn and apply [these skills] to many other subjects, as well as it would benefit them in their future careers no matter if they went into business or something else,” Shaffer said.
Between both schools there were 60 students who participated in the programs and entered the competition in October. Students had the chance to learn business skills and apply them into their own project and present them in front of a panel of judges.
One of the winning teams at the competition had the idea of launching a peer-tutoring program at their middle school for students in need of help. Student tutors have been selected and the tutoring program is planned to launch at Clay Middle School in the next couple of weeks. Qu said it’s been amazing seeing students grow throughout Ignite.
Photo provided by Claire Qu
“We got to work one-on-one with the students during the sessions and teach them a lot of content that they had never heard of before and then be able to see them present professionally in front of a judging panel and be confident in their ideas was really cool to see,” Qu said.
Shaffer said that many students who participated in Ignite were hesitant at the start.
“A lot of them came into Ignite and, when they heard about the idea of creating a proposal or competing, they were really nervous,” Shaffer said. “They were unsure of whether they would be able to do it or not, and then, by the end, when they came out of the program, they were confident, they were proud of what they accomplish and they were proud of their ideas and had a great time at the competition.”
As for the future of Qu and Shaffer’s initiative, they are hoping to expand to other schools, not only in the Carmel Clay School District, but other school districts as well. They are currently looking for two additional passionate leaders to continue leading the program in the right direction.