Students innovate for Econ class project

Economic class hosts the 14th annual Econ Fair at lunch, April 5. The in-depth project lasted seven and a half weeks, allotting time to brainstorm, make prototypes, present their ideas, and eventually create final products to be sold to students at lunch time.

Economics teacher Robert Foshee started the tradition in the early 2000s as a way to apply real world activities to topics learned in the classroom. Last year, Covid-19 prevented the fair from occurring.

“What I miss most about not having the Econ Fair last year,” Foshee said, “is seeing the students’ hard work pay off and [last year’s students] missed being part of the tradition.”

Grades depend on brainstorming, prototypes and budgeting, an advertising campaign, presentation, and a final reflection paper. Organized in groups of two or three, the mock entrepreneurs had to work together to create and sell their product. Most teams utilized Instagram to advertise to students and show the process of making their products.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNO6H1GFZcp/

Shown above is the business “Artisanal Pens”, created by seniors Bryce Foshee, Dylan Zhang, and Andrew Rieker. Using a lathe, they hand-made pen parts out of metal rods.

This year, students are limited to making non-food products, encouraging them to innovate with what they sell.

Seniors Samantha Portale and Brynlee Schmidt teamed up and sold stress balls filled with slime. Their product sold out completely before the end of lunch.

“I would say the hardest part for preparing was figuring out what to put in our stress balls,” Portale said. “We tried Play-doh, we tried a lot of different things, but ultimately we decided to do slime because it was the easiest and felt the best.”

Meilani Gilmore, ‘24, purchased decorative vinyl records from Doppio Decor.

“It was cool getting to see the different booths and what people came up with to sell, “Gilmore said. “If i was to sell a product, I would sell maybe jewelry, or stickers would be cool.”

For past Econ Fairs, see Annual Econ Fair offers products made by senior class and Annual Econ Fair offers products made by senior class.

Summer Foshee can be reached via email.