With an array of honors courses to choose from, the Finkles were able to find a schedule that worked with Mattie’s academic needs, and now enables him to move through subject matter quickly without having to wait for the rest of the class to complete an assignment. In addition to traditional subjects, he chose to add “Startup Corps” to his schedule this year, a non-credit course designed by Schoolyard Ventures which allows students to feed their entrepreneurial spirit and start their own businesses.

“Mattie has always been a bit more introverted, so it was a bit of a surprise to us that right off the bat he would enroll in a course like this,” said Jay, Mattie’s father. “We were really excited by the concept of the class, and it has been a great experience so far for him.”

Inspired by his parents’ entrepreneurial efforts, Mattie has decided to give new life to the family coffee business “Nestle Nook Coffee Roasters,” during the course of this interactive, lifelike class. Startup Corps doesn’t simulate what it would be like to start your own business; it allows students like Mattie to take the steps to make their business a reality.

Coffee roasting began as a personal hobby for Jay and Denise, who started roasting their own beans to replicate the old world Italian tastes found when they spent holidays with Denise’s family.

“After tasting how good these fresh hand roasted and ground beans were, I knew we could never go back to buying coffee from a giant can at the store,” says Jay. And they never did.

Over the years, Jay and Denise continued to roast coffee for themselves, but also grew the hobby into a charitable effort –roasting bags for friends and neighbors, and often providing coffee for local community events. They also decided to share their gift with those less fortunate. The family has generously donated over 20,000 pounds of fresh roasted beans to troops overseas, and to victims of storm damage up and down the east coast.

The vital component of a Startup Corps projects is that students take the hands-on initiative to start their own business – this is not a hypothetical project or learning module that is designed to teach business practices. Mattie, who made Achievement House’s distinguished honor roll for the first quarter, will dive head first into the small business sector. He will need to do much more than just learn how to properly roast the coffee, and along the way the class will help Mattie determine fixed startup costs, allocate supply and demand, project income and learn to adapt to different variables such as a piece of malfunctioning equipment, or a late delivery.

“When he was at his old school he would be out the door before 6:30 am, because he was on the bus for an hour. We almost never saw him (except for at dinner) because he would come home and go straight to his room to do homework,” is how Jay describes the family’s experience with a traditional school. “Now, we get to spend a good portion of the day together, and watching him work on a project like this is something he never would have been able to experience at his normal high school.”