Sunday, November 3, 2013

Student Led Projects

There are twenty three classrooms in our program grouped into four different levels.  Most of our classrooms/levels have student led projects they have started to help earn money to pay for activities for the kids. Other classrooms have projects that don't generate income but help with things we need done for the program like filling our classroom water jugs, maintaining the vans, and keeping our campus clean. Here are some of the income generating projects we have:


A gardening service
A house cleaning service
Jewelry making
Recycling
Car washing
Baking
Hair Clips

My classroom, for the last 3 years, has provided a food delivery service for students and staff in our program.  Currently we are doing this every other Friday.  The fee we charge is usually around one dollar per order (not item).  We deliver pizza, burgers, Mexican food, sandwiches etc.  Monday mornings we start by putting up flyers around campus announcing what restaurant we will be serving that week (I also send out an email to each teacher with the restaurant flyer attached).  I don't offer every item on a restaurants menu so we can keep it simple for the kids. Thursdays we pass flyers out to students as they are leaving school.  

Friday mornings from 8:00 to 9:30 my kids, with help from staff, collect all of the orders and money. We then fax or email the order in to the restaurant.  Before lunch some of the students go with my aides to pick up the food while the rest of us prepare for it's arrival.  Once the food comes we separate the food by classroom, put each classrooms orders into crates, and add any chips or sodas that have been ordered (we purchase these separately). The kids then deliver the food to each classroom.  We have gotten so good at this we can do it in about 15 minutes. The kids love doing this, it gets crazy and everyone is yelling out orders, but they really get a sense of accomplishment when they are done.  Costco pizza is one of the favorites. We have sold over 75 orders, up to 200 slices, in one day!  

Do any of your programs run student led projects?  I would love to hear of other money making ventures students are participating in!

4 comments:

  1. O my goodness. This is a fabulous idea. It seems like a lot of work to set up, was it hard to do?

    The transition students in our program have a card making business.

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  2. Not hard at all. I just made up some fliers from the restaurants we use. We have found some that work out very well like Costco Pizza, Chipotle, Olive Gardens soup and salad lunch special, and a couple local sandwich shops. Most of them I can order online which makes it a whole lot easier. The kids wear their aprons and are so professional it's cute, lol.

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  3. How does your house cleaning & gardening service work?

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  4. Actually at the moment they don't work at all. New district rules state students can not run power tools or go on/in private property during school time. Our housecleaning group used to just clean by word of mouth school employees homes about 3 a day 2x a week. They provided the cleaning products, vacuum etc and our group consisted of two classroom aides and about 4 students. They charged about half of what it would cost for a regular service. Our gardening group consisted of the same amount of people. They would do the same duties a regular gardener did, mow, edge, blow, rake etc. The students were paid in incentives and gift cards after replenishing their stock and putting some aside for bigger items.

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