‘Boss Club’ exposes St. Benilde students to hands-on, entrepreneurial basics

By BETH DONZE
Clarion Herald

Sixth and seventh graders at St. Benilde were asked a fundamental question on the first day of “Boss Club” – a compulsory entrepreneurship curriculum being piloted on their Metairie campus this school year: What is a product or service that suits your skills and sparks your enthusiasm to the point of wanting to take it to the marketplace?

Seventh grader Wesley Foge immediately knew his Boss Club business would be something connected with his favorite pastime: tinkering with computers. 

“I thought of a service where people would email me about broken computers, and then I would help diagnose them; they’d send them in, and I’d get them working again,” said Wesley of his fledgling enterprise – Vortex Computer – a business dedicated to extending the life of all sorts of electronic devices.

“These things are constantly breaking, and there’s also a lot of planned obsolescence happening,” Wesley observed, noting that the pressure to buy the “latest and greatest” model is not only seldom necessary, but is also “very bad” for the environment.

“My dad has multiple old laptops that he’s passed on to me, and they still work fine – they just need their batteries replaced or new drives,” he said. “The laptops I use daily are from 2007.”

Problem-solving skills

The idea to offer Boss Club was planted eight years ago, when Thomas Huck, St. Benilde’s principal, learned of an entrepreneurship curriculum that had students dividing into teams to handle one facet of a single, class-wide business. The Boss Club, discovered by Huck last summer through an email solicitation, promised to teach students a wider range of 21st-century workplace skills by making them responsible for every aspect of their own individual or small-group business.

“Boss Club has that real-world relevance – teaching students the marketing, the accounting, the (required) creativity, the basics of supply and demand,” Huck said. Weekly sessions, led by Beth Monistere during the students’ computer and library science time, feature video testimonials from actual entrepreneurs and self-guided tutorials immersing young people in business concerns such as budgeting, tracking expenses, creating logos, websites, QR codes and business cards, and even the composition of a proper business email.

Problem-solving skills

Seventh grader Princeton Banks is currently tweaking his website on which parents will be able to register their children for a service called Smart Factor Tutoring, targeting grades 4-6. He said tutoring is the perfect fit for him because he has always enjoyed being a study-buddy.

“I will go to their house and help them – because I feel (making house calls) would be an easier and more comfortable way to help them with any problems they don’t understand,” Princeton said.

Also making Boss Club the perfect fit at a Catholic school is the curriculum’s optional Christian track that teaches budding entrepreneurs to use their God-given talents and business acumen to give back to the community. For example, Let’s Cut Grass – the lawn care business undertaken by sixth graders Jonathan Lahatte and Ryan Easley – plans on offering a discount to veterans and first responders.

At last November’s school fair, Huck gave interested Boss Club students a chance to road-test their endeavors. Sixth graders Amelie Sharp and Emma DuMars, who learned how to sew for their business A+E Stitching, quickly sold out of their pillows, blankets and dog bandanas.


The seventh-grade trio of Colson Rodriguez, Jacob Parta and Nathan Guidry also learned that their decal-making business – NJC Customizing – has a future, having sold more than 100 decals at the fair and discovering a new category of clients: those who use electric scooters.

“It was really cool for me to see, because some of the students made some decent money, and they were just so excited,” Huck said. “I could tell the parents are really proud of the students, too. It’s real-world learning! They’re learning to communicate as a team, designing their own products and creating their own websites.”

Thomas Huck welcomes inquiries from Catholic elementary and high schools on the Boss Club. He can be reached via email at [email protected].

Pictured above, from left: Seventh graders Colson Rodriguez, Jacob Parta (and Nathan Guidry, not pictured) tested out their decal-making business – NJC Customizing – at St. Benilde’s November fair. (Photo courtesy of St. Benilde School); pictured below: Boss Club teacher Beth Monistere teaches a lesson on creating a proper and effective business email. (Photos by Beth Donze, Clarion Herald)