Miniature world economy teaching students about entrepreneurship, global systems

Students from Caraway School set up small businesses to embrace creativity and learn financial literacy.

An entire economy, from small businesses to a replica of the stock market, has been built by Caraway students at Argyll Centre.

The marketplace is the result of three months of work by the students to develop their own business plans, logos, budgets, products and advertising strategy.

“I’m in a bank. The name of the bank is Bo Bankery,” said Grade 5 student Audrey.

“Me and my friends and partners, we have a cookie business part — that’s why it’s the ‘bankery’ — and then the bank part.”

The bakery side of the operation mainly deals in chocolate chip cookies, but the bank side has a few streams of revenue.

“We have bank accounts, so then people can keep their money with us if they don’t have a wallet,” Audrey told CTV News Edmonton. “We gave money to other classrooms who have less money or weren’t making as much, because we were making a lot.”

The entire K-9 program – numbering about 130 students – participates in the annual project dating back about 20 years.

Each class has its own currency. Students work shifts, earn pay, and can buy stocks in other businesses.

There is also a movie theatre, ninja weaponry and 3D-printing business.

“We set up for many, many days in a row, and so they’re constantly selling. And then we’re looking at, how is our own economy fluctuating? What are the currencies that are happening within our economy? What rooms are doing well? So if you imagine each room is a country, how is each individual country kind of doing within the current economy?” explained educational assistant Chelsea Mulholland.

“This unit and theme is really important because it’s having kids look at what kind of global world do they want to create for themselves? … What kind of voters do they want to become when they’re looking at tax systems? What kind of systems are they going to apply into their real world moving forward?”

Grade 8 student Roko, behind Roko’s Tacos, said he is learning the most about budgeting.

“Can we do this? Maybe buy less of this? And more of this because we think we’re going to sell more? ... We have bananas, but no one’s really buying bananas for their toppings, so we just stopped buying them,” he said.

But he said the overarching lesson is resilience.

“Hard work and don’t give up.”

The Caraway program calls itself an alternative learning environment in which the curriculum is delivered largely through projects to mixed-age groups.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Sean McClune