We moved our blog

Check out our new and updated blog at http://urbanschoolfoundation.blogspot.com/.

Proud to Support

The urban school foundation feels strongly about providing quality education. Congruent with this notion is our esteem for quality public broadcasting, which we feel can offer quality educational programming. That is why we’re proud to support wttw Chicago.

Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour!

This past Friday our Schurz Young Entrepreneurs students were invited by Junior Achievement to take part in the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour. We all learned so much from speakers Arel Moodie,  Adam Witty and Duane Spires.

All the speakers on the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour are young entrepreneurs under 30 who have made their first million dollars. These speakers gave our entrepreneurs sound advice on how to find the confidence in ourselves to start a business. They also offered pearls of wisdom through personal and business stories. We learned that when you’re starting a business you should:

1. Commit
2. Learn the proper technique
3. Find a mentor
4. Take action!

And though we were learning, we had so much fun doing it! A great thanks to the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour, all our speakers and Junior Achievement.

(USF Young Entrepreneurs dance off to win Arel Moodie’s new inspirational book)

We’re soooo official!

We’re completely official now. Back in January we received our 501(c)3 tax exempt status from the IRS. Now we have our e-number exempt status with the State of Illinois. Yipee!

Make a tax-exempt donation! Donate a backpack and make an immediate difference in a student’s life today, or donate to our Young Entrepreneurs program and impact a student’s life forever. Remember, with no administrative costs, ALL of your donation goes towards our backpacks and entrepreneurship education.

Read more about our programs, here.

From the mouths of BABES…

Ahhhh, primary market research – a great excuse to talk to that guy or girl you like so much! Continuing on our marketing theme, Schurz students are conducting surveys to learn what magnet products their peers would be most interested in purchasing.

Why magnets? In addition to writing their own business plans, the class is starting a business as a group with the guidance of Kevin Rutter and Luciana Tiberio. The goal is to manufacture magnets that would do well in the market that exists at Schurz HS – hands on experience starting and running a business. As a lesson in social responsibility, all proceeds will be donated to a school organization of their choosing.

Here’s an example of a magnet that might be assembled and sold:

4. The adhesive with vinyl lettering is placed on the magnet. The excess magnet material is cut, and the product is packaged.

3. Vinyl lettering is placed on the adhesive

2. The colored vinyl is kiss-cut with a design. Then, the excess vinyl is picked out, leaving only the kiss-cut design.

1. Raw magnet material

“She said pee!”

Yes, we did! Our Schurz High School students are learning about creating a good marketing mix using the four P’s – Price, Product, Placement and Promotion. Heading into their 7th month of our Young Entrepreneurs program, our students continue to write business plans for their business ideas, and they’re learning about how to get the word out about their products and services.

Merchants Of Cool

After learning about different methods of market research we watched The Merchants of Cool, a documentary that explores how MTV discovers what’s cool in popular teen culture. Girls learned that their customer profile was labeled a midriff, the boys were mooks and by the end EVERYONE understood how they were being marketed-to.

We also learned about how marketing and branding has evolved, and the how and why they identify with one brand lifestyle and not another. Frontline’s The Persuaders was a great way to illustrate these topics.

Pack Our Haunted House!

We want to thank the Athletic Department, particularly Chad Dauphin, Dimitra Mullins and Michael Feigh, and the wonderful students at Stevenson High School for all their help in our most recent Pack-a-Packathon. Selling t-shirts, Stevenson Packed Their Haunted House on Halloween weekend to raise over $4,000 for backpacks. Thank you so much!

For more photos from that evening, visit our photo gallery.

Principal for a Day

Luciana Tiberio and Bob Tucker took part in Chicago Public School’s Principal for a Day October fundraiser. Principal for a day is an opportunity for local philanthropic organizations and businesses to learn about Chicago Public Schools and interact with students, teachers and principals.

Working along side Thurgood Marshall Middle School’s Principal Paul Flaherty, Luciana read the morning announcements, handed out pumpkins for the homeroom decorating contest and visited several classrooms. Along with volunteering her time, The Urban School Foundation’s contribution to the school and helped to purchase new sports equipment.

Bob Tucker lead the charge at Schurz High School pep rally, along with volunteer friend and local radio personality Dougie Stylz. It was Shurz’s first pep rally in three years. Needless to say the students were excited as can be for their homecoming weekend.

Attending the Principal for a Day Reception at Navy Pier later that evening, USF was excited to hear that the day helped raise $1.8 million in monetary donations as well as additional support, program and training pledges from volunteer principals. We also were able to meet some of our talented students presenting everything form their newest robot inventions to their talented dance skills.

Making it rain…backpacks.

Our first backpack give away! Thurgood Marshall Middle School students were so excited and grateful to get their backpacks with supplies, fun stickers, and activity books, and we were so happy to help!

We want to send out a special thank you to Bob and Courtney Tucker for their generous donation of the backpacks! Thanks to Barbara Lumpkin and Mae Jefferson at the CPS Office of External Affairs and Partnerships for all your help coordinating the drop-off, and Mae for your help trucking the backpacks over to the school on such an unusually hot day. Last but not least, we want to thank everyone at Marshall Middle: our strong student helpers for helping us set up the backpacks and Principal Flaherty for all your help making sure these book bags got into the right hands. Check it out:

“This has helped out my family so much. We really need school supplies but my mom couldn’t get me any this year. I’ve been using them a lot. I gave the coloring books to my younger brothers and they love them. I use the stickers on my bedroom door. Thank you so much. I will not forget what you have done for us.” –Anonymous

To read more thank you notes, click here, and see the pictures here!

Entrepreneurs in Teaching Entrepreneurship

Urban School Foundation was started with the intention of providing Chicagoland’s homeless and disadvantaged students with the tools to build a brighter future, and our Young Entrepreneurs program is a great example of how we plan on doing this.

Urban School Foundation is working closely with Illinois 2009-2010 Teacher of the Year, Kevin Rutter, to develop and deliver a hands-on, experience-based curriculum in entrepreneurship to the Junior Class finance students at Carl Schurz High School.

Class started on September 7th, and since then students been exploring their talents, learning about different types of businesses and recognizing opportunities for capitalizing on their skills. They’ve also heard about the sacrifices it took to start a business by local entrepreneur, Bob Tucker Jr, and visited and asked questions about his business. All this is building up to the start of writing and developing a strong business plan.

We want students to come up with their own ideas for business opportunities and write their own business plans, but we also want to provide a good model of what a great business plan and business idea looks like. Together with the help of local decal manufacturer, CDI Corp., and Mr. Rutter the class will not only be writing a real business plan, we’ll be starting a real business!

With this program we hope not only to build confidence and provide them with the skills they need to build a business for themselves one day, but also to better understand business and thereby be better employees. A benefit to not only their lives, but our collective future.

Stay tuned to find out what ideas the students come up on their adventure in entrepreneurship. Read more about our Future Entrepreneurs program on our website, www.urbanschoolfoundation.org.