Laguna Blanca Hosts Summer Educator’s Conference on Entrepreneurial Studies

The workshop presented a highly developed, adaptable entrepreneurship curriculum designed to help students solve real-world business problems and discover their own ability to create value and contribute to the world.

Created by Hawken School in Cleveland and developed globally by Wildfire Education, the method has become an integral part of the LBS academic landscape over the last two years, after Laguna Blanca Upper School Entrepreneurship teacher Paul Chiment and Middle School Instructor Blake Dorfman attended a workshop for the method in 2015.

“Since Paul and Blake attended a workshop two years ago, they have developed a rich entrepreneurial studies program that involves the entire community — Laguna Blanca and Santa Barbara together,” said Doris Korda, who built Hawken’s program before founding Wildfire in 2017.

In Chiment’s class at Laguna Blanca, high school student teams act as consultants to local businesses, studying how they operate and offering solutions to issues faced by the company. Middle school students in Dorfman’s class design and develop solutions for clients on campus, learning the fundamentals of Steve Blank’s Lean LaunchPad for startups.

While Korda and Wildfire program coordinator Alison Tanker led the workshop with inspirational content and testimonials, Chiment and Dorfman provided their own insights to the diverse group of attendees. The cohort included teachers trying to build programs in universities, inner-city public schools, independent schools, and even a pair of entrepreneurs from Colombia whose government has asked them to develop curriculum for high school teachers around their country.

Key guidance was also provided by Hawken students who have experienced the power of the program.

“Guidance from Paul and Blake about how to start, what works, and what doesn't was hugely important in giving teachers the confidence they need to take on a completely new way of teaching,” Korda said. “And of course, LBS is the perfect setting for educational innovation and collaboration.”

“My course has changed through each of the four semesters it’s been given, and it will continue to do so. It’s far from perfect,” said Dorfman. “Educators need to be able to take Wildfire’s concept and adapt it to their own schools based on variables like class size, time constraints, and facilities. The good news is that the concept is malleable and deliverable in many forms.”

The workshop sessions took place in the Isham Library and Nylen Academic Research Center and spread out to various Laguna classrooms and, of course, its idyllic outdoor settings. On one particularly beautiful afternoon, attendees performed elevator pitches for fictional products in the Ruston Amphitheater.

By the end of the program, teachers left the campus with concrete ideas for pilot programs which they will roll out in the next year.

Wildfire has started a podcast called “Do School Better” which tells the story of various educators as they have developed similar programs in their schools. Laguna’s entrepreneurship instructors are featured on an episode of the podcast. Visit www.wildfire-education.org and click on the podcast link to learn more.