Donation to Santa's Toy Box

On October 24th, Mercersburg Entrepreneurship class students donated over $300 dollars to Santa's Toy Box (STB), a Rotary charity event that provides toys for needy children.  Having raised funds through an event at Townfest, the students were able to help provide toys for at least 5 families.  This program is part of Mercersburg Academy's winter outreach.  All 9th grade students go to help STB by wrapping gifts that are then delivered to the children by Rotarians.  This personal relationship with the school and the town is meaningful and significant to many individuals.  Giving to this program has made the school and town proud of this group's altruism.  Way to go class!

Custom Ink.

On Monday October 21st our Entrepreneurship class has it’s first field-trip. We went to the DC area to visit three companies. We had insights into the companies facilities and conversations with the owner and employees. These three businesses were Custom Ink., ThinkFoodGroup and M Help Desk. It was a very inspiring opportunity with a lot of learning opportunities. One of the businesses that stood out to me personally was Custom Ink.
    Custom Ink is an online store that allows you to create your own design and print it on a t-shirt, sweatshirt etc. It is based in Virginia and that is where we visited it. Walking into the lobby, we received a warm welcome by Marc Katz and Fred Schaufeld. We then started with a quick tour around Custom Ink. The office was very friendly. Customer’s and Inker’s pictures were framed on the walls. Right away we understood that this company put attention on its key values such as costumer service, quality and fun. These were even printed onto the wall. While walking through the office space, we experienced a nice working atmosphere for the inkers. We arrived at the conference room to get a speech by Mark Katz. He started it of by showing us a video from the previous year, about the development of the business and new projects. After watching the video, he gave us background information of Custom Ink and what helped them to succeed. He informed us about the most difficult time for them, which was from 2008-2009. He considers it to be harder then the start up of the business, because there was much more to loose and the motivation was gone. This was also caused by troubles with Google, because in order for an online site to be successful they need a high ranking by Google. Custom Ink went against the Google rules in the process of getting them on top of the search, which got them banned. This was when Fred contributed to the business, because he saw it’s potential and invested into it. By this investment the company reinvented itself and found a new motivation. They now came out with Inky as their logo and focused on the customer. Fred also helped solving their problem with Google. Now the company is on a good way to grow bigger and bigger. He introduced us to his two new projects, which are also Internet based businesses called Booster and Peach. Him and Fred emphasized to us that it’s important that, if you want to start your own business, you have to love working there. It should not be work but fun. After all questions got asked, he gave us free T-shirts and we all ended up loving it.

The Best School-Wide Event

The first thing that my group knew that we wanted to include in our school-wide event was the opening of the Romeo's food truck. As something that has never been available to Mercersburg Academy before, we knew that it would be able to attract a lot of students. We talked to the Romeo's owner and he was completely on board to support our event and so our next step was figuring out the rest of the details. Our group met with Trini and began to discuss different ideas as to what people would be doing while eating Romeo's food, where they would be, and when it happened. It took a little while to finally decide on an idea, but we all agreed that having our very own Mercersburg teachers perform would be a great way to continue our originality streak, and finally, to top it off, we would have the entire event on the back patio of Irvine, a place that is not commonly used to host events. Our group distributed the tasks that needed to be done (such as talking to Mrs. Rutherford, Mr. Holzwarth, and Ms. LaRue) fairly evenly and everyone took responsibility to make sure that our event runs smoothly. All we have left to do is make announcements at lunch and make sure that everything is finalized. So if you're on campus this Friday night, October 4th, be sure to come to our event from 6-8pm to enjoy the fine cuisine from Romeo's pizzeria and the smooth vocals of two of your favorite teachers, Dave Holzwarth and Katie LaRue.

Deal or No Deal / Let's Make a Deal - Our All School Event

For our event, we're having an all school game show. We have worked with both Dr.Jones and Mrs.Jones and have gotten a spot during a community gathering on a friday morning later in the month, directly before long weekend. In this game show, we will be playing "Deal or No Deal" and "Let's Make a Deal" with the school students involved as contestants and as an audience. With financial support from SAC and Ms.Hoffman we will be able to provide "contestants" with actual cash prizes to help enhance the game's atmosphere but more importantly make the event more suspenseful and enjoyable.
Our goals will be measured in overall atmosphere and how the audience enjoys it. Since this event is a required event, we can not simply measure in attendance because the whole school WILL be there.
We hope people enjoy the event, and maybe some of you can earn some money as well!

Learning Outside the Classroom

With the arrival of the pool tables, as well as the already present ping pong tables, the Simon Student Center has become a place for students to learn things that cannot be taught in the text books or the classroom. The students of Mercersburg are taking full advantage of the competitive environment these recreational tables create. Along with learning how to vie against each other, the students also stay active while bettering their eye-hand coordination through two very skillful activities. These activities create a bond between students that can only be created through active competitiveness in fun filled sports. For some, these two activities are the highlight of their day and they look forward to taking advantage of them at the the end of the day. Moral is everything in a stressful environment and the ping pong and pool tables definitely help out!

Speakers

We had a speaker come in to talk with us, Mr. Schoenberger. He is an entrepreneur, he has worked in several industries in the entrepreneurship field such as the Beer Industry, and Outdoor Sports. It's a huge help being able to have someone with that type of expertise speak with us. I hope we do this more often. I had the pleasure of speaking to another students parents who also happen to be entrepreneurs, the Kistler's parents own an Outdoor Sports shop in West Virginia and gave me prime insight on the entrepreneurship world. "Location, location, location" Mrs. Kistler stressed to me, she explained that no matter how good the product is you won't sell if it's not in the right place. The most cherished  part of having these people speak to me is having them tell me all of there failures so that I can learn from that without having to endure any of my own.