MOBILE STORE — Oak Glen Middle School fifth grade teacher Anna Mastrantoni speaks with sixth grade student Kaydyn Burton at the Bear Essentials, the school’s new mobile store. -- Contributed

NEW MANCHESTER — Rolling down the hallways of Oak Glen Middle School is a school store. The blue cart decorated with bear paws sells school spirit merchandise while teaching business skills. The store named The Bear Essentials is manned by fifth grade students and is filled with school themed merchandise selected by students. The store’s ribbon cutting was on Jan. 24, and on its shelves are T-shirts, water bottles, totes and folders.

“It just teaches them the basics of business and what it means to own a business and operate a business and to pay attention to those small details that you need to be able to run a business, essentially it is what the store is intending to do,” said Alyssa Mick, Oak Glen Middle School principal.

Anna Mastrantoni’s fifth grade students are responsible for the store. The Bear Essentials sells merchandise made by students for students. It can be found in the main hall of Oak Glen Middle School at the beginning of the school day. Six students run the store during homeroom. The plan is to have one student from each of the six fifth grade homerooms work the store for a week and to have them train a new team at the start of the following week. Mastrantoni’s goal is to give every fifth grade student a chance to work at The Bear Essentials, but she doesn’t expect that goal to happen this year, with there being approximately 130 fifth grade students and the school year halfway over.

Mastrantoni works with students on the store during homeroom and on Wednesdays during their enrichment period. This year Mastrantoni is getting the program going, and is learning with her students on how to operate the store. As the program grows Mastrantoni is considering bringing in business owners to talk to students and forming partnerships with local businessmen and women, but those are plans for later on. She would also like to introduce seasonal and holiday themed merchandise.

“They’re eager to get to work it, they’re eager to do as many jobs as they can. You know, ‘I want to do inventory, I want to make this at,’ you know, that’s probably the hardest part is trying to find a job for every single student and making them happy. So we’re just trying to rotate them in and out so they can try to get their hands on a little bit of everything,” said Mastrantoni.

Each morning the cart is rolled out to the main hallway and parked. Students can walk up to the store and browse the shelves. As a student shops one of the workers grabs a clipboard with an order form and marks down which items are being bought and how much it costs. When it’s time to check out the order form is handed to the cashier who enters everything into the cash register. If things don’t add up the workers check each other’s math and figure out what went wrong. The students check and count inventory, marking spreadsheets to keep track of sales. They also track profits and count change. Mastrantoni keeps a folder with the order forms, spreadsheets, inventory counts, and profit documents.

Last year Mastrantoni attended an entrepreneurship training. During that training they read “Who Owns the Ice House” by Clifton Taulbert and Gary Schoeniger. Mastrantoni was inspired by the book and its focus on making do with what you have. She wanted to teach students to develop an entrepreneurship mindset and the other skills included in the book. Around October, the idea for the entrepreneurship program came to her, and she was approved to develop the store.

“It (“Who Owns the Ice House”) was about someone who at that time had everything put against them, but how they had the mindset that they were going to make it work and how you take what you have laid in front of you and you find solutions to the problems,” said —- “And it said most business plans start on a napkin. You don’t have to have a formal business plan, you have to learn as you go. So we took that approach where we tried to have everything laid out, but we’re learning as we go. If we make a mistake, we try to see what we can do to fix that mistake and how we can make that mistake better, how we can make our business better, and reflecting back on what you’re doing and what will work better.”

Mastrantoni worked with her three classes to develop the store. Oak Glen Middle has six fifth grade teachers, each teacher is responsible for specific topics, and the students are placed into tracks. Mastrantoni teaches the health, science and social studies classes in her track.

Each class of approximately 20 students brainstormed products and worked together to develop a business plan. All the students involved worked to raise money to fund the venture. The class also pondered backup ideas in case they didn’t raise the money they were hoping for.

“It really does provide our students with a lot of opportunities to do things that are entirely applicable to the real world,” said Mick.

The John D. Rockefeller IV Career Center carpentry students where enlisted to build the stand. They purchased a Cricut and materials to create their merchandise. Their backup plans also helped to create products of different price points and expense levels to make, like their LEGO shaped crayons, have a low cost to make because they melt old crayons down and pour them into molds.

After being open for a week, the store has made profits of $200 and even sold out of a few items. The students are now conducting market analysis to see what products are selling and which products their peers would like. Mastrantoni reported students want to conduct a survey to determine their next product line. They are also learning about profit margins because they are spending money to replenish inventory.

“They’re so excited and because we have the name and the colors and the theme all based around the store,” said Mastrantoni. “I just think it gives them something to own, you know, ownership over something. They’re so excited that they in a sense get to do their own thing. I mean, yeah, it’s structured and I have to approve it, but they still feel that ownership over the business. So I think, that in itself is just spirit, both school when personal spirit.”

Mastrantoni is thankful to the community members and business who helped to make the store possible through donations. The students raised $2,000 to get the store up and running. The Bear Essentials acts as a learning lab where students get hands on and practical applications to concepts they learn in the classroom. Once the store becomes profitable Mastrantoni would like to start using profits to fund field trips and buy classroom equipment to further enrich student’s education.

(Riedel can be contacted at jriedel@reviewonline.com)