Ready, Start, Launch — Albuquerque’s Entrepreneurial High School Starts to Take Shape
Editor’s Note: Albuquerque, New Mexico, is quickly becoming an entrepreneurial hub, and today we’re pleased to bring you a write-up by Eagle Rock’s very own Dan Hoffman, a literature arts instructional specialist, who details the work going on behind the scenes to launch one of that state’s first entrepreneurial-focused high schools.
By Dan Hoffman, Language Arts Instructional Specialist
How do you create meaningful curriculum based on real world problems? How do you foster an entrepreneurial spirit in young people and give them the skills they need to create meaningful change in their communities and in their own lives?
Michael Soguero, Eagle Rock Director of Professional Development; Anastacia Galloway, Eagle Rock Professional Development Associate; and I headed back down to Albuquerque, N.M., in early May to find answers to these pressing questions. We collaborated with Tim Kubik of Kubik Perspectives — a Colorado-based curriculum-design, assessment and evaluation consultancy — to continue our work with the New Mexico Center for School Leadership (NMCSL) on launching its newest venture — a new charter school that will focus on entrepreneurship.
The plan to create an entrepreneurship-focused, project-based learning school dedicated to creating new leaders in the field for the city is being advanced in part by tapping the local wisdom of community and industry partners to generate real-world entrepreneurship curriculum for the future school.
NMCSL invited Eagle Rock to kick off its work with the start-up charter school in February of this year. We engaged a group of local entrepreneurs who had a great sense of social responsibility and wanted to create something of value for local youth. We worked together in a workshop setting to generate the knowledge, skills and attributes that students would need in order to be successful entrepreneurs in their community.
In addition, we brainstormed initial project ideas for the school. And while the initial workshop was a great success, we knew we could push the group further, generating not just school projects, but real-world work that students could accomplish as part of their high school experience.
Last month, we returned and reconvened the Continue reading…