FRHS entrepreneurial minds target Mother's Day

By Libby James
Correspondent

Bloom Town is coming. On May 13, the day before Mother's Day, the parking lot at Fossil Ridge, Fort Collins' newest high school at 5400 Ziegler Road, will be a blaze of color.

More than 600 potted geraniums--red, white and pink--will be for sale by a small group of students who will welcome anyone with $5 to spare and in search of a perfect Mother's Day gift. Decorative foil wrappers will be available.

These are no ordinary geraniums. They have been nursed from infancy by students participating in the Growing Entrepreneurial Minds project made possible through a Poudre School District Foundation grant for Supporting Partnerships in Innovative Education.

Long before the tiny plants arrived at the greenhouse at Fossil Ridge, senior James Hobson, junior Branden Baker-Haptonstall and sophomores, Brant Rosen and Dave Verrastro, were hard at work establishing their school-based business. Each developed a notebook containing business and marketing research plans, profitability analysis and cash-flow projections. They determined how many plants their space would accommodate and then decided how many plants they could reasonably grow and sell.

"When the plants arrived, we became parents," Verrastro explains. They potted each plant, lined them up on shelves and took on the responsibility of feeding, watering and pinching early buds to create bushy plants. They also monitored small strips of sticky paper to make sure bugs would not become a problem. Jan Gulley of Gulley Greenhouse served as advisor.

The students learned that an apparently simple task like choosing a name for their business presented a challenge. They debated for a month before agreeing on Bloom Town. Discussing an issue and coming to consensus is not an easy process, but for these students, in the districtwide high school autism program, the task presented special challenges.

Students with Autistic Spectrum Disorder commonly have difficulty with social interaction, communication and behavior. While they are often academically gifted, they are usually uncomfortable and inept at conversing and relating with others. The Growing Entrepreneurial Minds project was established by program teachers Bonnie Bailey and Michelle Fink to provide these students with real-life experience in the areas they need to develop most.

In the grant application, Bailey wrote, "By teaching the numerous skills necessary in starting a business, we are targeting the whole child with Autism/Asperger's Syndrome in a manner that is more in line with their learning style." She further explained that while it is not difficult to teach these students "the rules" for conversation and get them to repeat what they have learned on a test, putting that knowledge to use is a different matter.

In the early weeks of the class, Bailey provided conversation cards that students drew from a bucket and used as a starting point for initiating conversation with one to four people. "It was really hard at first," Verrastro says. "But we got better at it."

ASD children find adolescence difficult as they come into contact with widening social circles. Like all teens, they deal with complicated emotions, but in addition may be realizing for the first time that they are different from their peers.

After years as a paraprofessional working with moderate needs students at Kruse Elementary School, Bailey earned a master's degree in special education at the University of Northern Colorado. She was on the ground floor of the high school autism program when it was initiated three years ago.

ASD affects one in 166 children and is four times more prevalent among boys. Early intervention is critical and has received increased attention in recent years. Older children and adults may have more trouble accessing services. Bailey says that information on the best practice for dealing with adolescents with ASD is limited, and these students often find themselves ineligible for services after high school, making preparing them for the future imperative. Because they often prefer to work independently, learning entrepreneurial skills is particularly appropriate.

As a result of his experience in the Growing Entrepreneurial Minds project, Baker-Haptonstall has decided to start his own lawn-mowing business this summer. He is currently negotiating with his mother and grandmother for a loan to purchase a lawn mower.

The sales phase of Bloom Town will last only a day. Then entrepreneurial young minds will calculate expenses and profit and sit down together, using newly developed communication skills, to decide what do to with the proceeds.