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Partner Profile: Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship

The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship is a national teen entrepreneurship program taught at schools across the country. NFTE trains teachers to teach students real life business skills, including how to build and run their own business. Students create a business concept and their teachers and volunteers from Chicago’s business community then take them through the process of creating a business plan and how to sell their products and services.

“The secret of NFTE is that we’re using entrepreneurship education which is a reality-based curriculum to engage young people in school, teach them about the market economy and give them an entrepreneurial mindset to be successful in life,” says Christine Poorman, Executive Director, NFTE Chicago. “The bottom line is, young people need choices. NFTE can be one of those choices, they can choose to participate in the program or not, and if they opt in, they also have the opportunity to choose their own unique business idea and identify the needs that exist in their own community, and become critical thinkers.”
 
This is the inaugural year for the NFTE program at both CICS Longwood and CICS Ralph Ellison, but the program has already made quite an impact on both students and teachers: most recently, CICS Ralph Ellison’s Anthony Driver, Jr., became a finalist in the citywide competition held on May 24th at Morningstar and is being recognized at Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year event for his “Charge ‘n’ Go” business plan, a service that provides a secure mobile device charging locker for customers. Anthony is grateful for learning about entrepreneurship as it has motivated him to obtain a business degree after high school and inspired him to be a serial entrepreneur.

Teachers like Mr. Jandreski who teaches macroeconomics at CICS Longwood have found a sense of purpose in teaching NFTE’s curricula. “I want my students to go to college and clearly you can see they are – they’re doing something that’s based on their idea, they’re taking their future goals and putting them into the program and that’s what’s so valuable about this. But the most gratifying moment for me was when one of my students, who had always struggled with school, was explaining to an AP student in macroeconomics class what makes this class different than others. He said, ‘I used to live my life day by day; I was only wondering about what I was doing tomorrow. Now I see years from now. I was never able to look so far into the future until I took this class.’”