Educator Voice: How entrepreneurship education fosters young inventors

Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes prepare students across the country for life and potential careers, providing pertinent training across a variety of fields.

This past December, more than 5,000 career and technical professionals from around the world convened in San Antonio, Texas, for the annual Association for Career & Technical Education (ACTE) conference, called CareerTech VISION.

A key part of CTE programs includes business and marketing classes that teach students about entrepreneurship.

In this Educator Voice, Dawn Bowlus, director of the Jacobson Institute at the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center, explains how entrepreneurial programs help students develop skills that help them progress naturally from learning about business to creating their own start-ups.

“It’s a safe environment within our schools where young people can fail fast in order to succeed sooner,” says Bowlus. “They can take their failure, make modifications and move on the track to making progress with their entrepreneurial venture.”

Diane Fickel, a business teacher at Iowa City West High School, and Emily Hudachek, her former student turned colleague, are an example of one of the many ways that entrepreneurial education can help kickstart students’ early career development while still in high school.

“I think the reason why I fell in love with business and then became so passionate about teaching students is because it was the first time where I really realized that learning can be fun,” says Hudachek. “It’s that authenticity that I fell in love with that I now want to share with my students.”

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

To learn how you can participate in PBS News Hour Classroom’s Invention Educator Network, sign up here. Classroom’s invention education program brings teachers from various subjects and grade levels together to discuss all things invention & innovation.

Check out our Invention Education collection, including lessons by CTE educators.

Produced by Victoria Pasquantonio and Gianfranco Beran, News Hour Classroom’s production assistant.

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