Oprah’s Angel Network

The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, a 2009 Angel Network grantee, gets students excited about creating their own businesses.

Steve Mariotti went from being the worst teacher in one of the country’s worst schools, to making a positive difference in public schools around the world. Today, as the founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), Steve leads an international program that helps transform low-income students into budding entrepreneurs.

NFTE gets students like Travion Jones excited about the possibility of starting and running their own business.

Photo courtesy of NFTE

Back in 1982, after being mugged in Central Park, Steve quit his import/export business to become a teacher in hopes of helping the type of kids who had robbed him find other ways to make a living. Hired as the dropout prevention teacher at a high school in South Bronx, N.Y., at first Steve didn’t exactly connect with his students.

Confronted by his supervisor for poor performance, Steve had to reevaluate. He sought answers from students who had dropped out on his watch and realized that he was speaking down to them. As a last-ditch effort, Steve changed his teaching style to focus on the real-world issues he once dealt with—creating a business plan, marketing a product and dealing with all the other exciting challenges and headaches associated with running a small business.

His students gravitated to the new approach and embraced their inner entrepreneurs. Steve knew that he had stumbled onto a curriculum that could get kids excited about learning.

An Entrepreneurial Mindset

Nearly 30 years later, NFTE reaches 40,000 students a year in 13 countries by providing training to teachers at schools in low-income neighborhoods—places where the idea of owning a business can sometimes feel like an unattainable dream.

For Rodney Walker, a rising sophomore at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga., the dream is turning into reality. After struggling through his junior year in high school while dealing with family issues, Rodney took a NFTE course at ACE Tech Charter High School in Chicago, Ill., that ignited his imagination.

The intensive business curriculum motivated Rodney to turn his love of videotaping sporting events into a business. After learning about everything from marketing to analyzing the economics of one unit, Rodney formulated a business plan for a music and video production called Forever Life.

The plan won a citywide competition and finished second at the national 2008 Oppenheimer Funds/NFTE National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge. The experience inspired a quote from Rodney that is now his personal creed: “The moment you stop fighting for what you want, what you don’t want will automatically take over.”

Stories like Rodney’s inspire NFTE’s Chicago-branch executive director Christine Poorman to keep fighting to get business curriculum into more schools.

“It’s a civil rights issue,” said Christine, whose six-person team trains and certifies entrepreneurial teachers in 40 public schools while reaching out to the business and university communities to share their expertise with students.

“We bring in mentors and guest speakers and really try to bring the curriculum to life and engage kids,” she said. “We’re trying to use a curriculum that is very reality based to get them to do math, reading and writing.”

As the program continues to expand, convincing all educators of its importance remains an ongoing effort. Some resist the notion that if something isn’t taught at wealthier public schools that it should be taught in poorer schools.

“There still lags an understanding of how kids from low-income communities learn,” said Christine. “We need to do more outreach and more thought leadership within the community to make it known why teaching these concepts is important.”

Christine’s organization now has a big supporter in a high place.

“As CEO of Chicago Public Schools, Arne Duncan was able to see the NFTE program first hand," she said, "and now as Secretary of Education talks about the critical importance of teaching young people entrepreneurship and igniting innovation within our schools nationwide.”

Zoë Damacela, who runs her own apparel business, is preparing for NFTE's 2009 national competition this October.

Photo courtesy of NFTE