At the entrance of the campus lies the cornerstone of eagle pride. Managed by a select group of students from Entrepreneurship Practicum and carefully monitored, the eagle spirit store works throughout the school day to ensure red, white and blue t-shirts, jerseys, caps and parking IDs are properly delivered to webstore customers.

“Amongst themselves, my group of students take on several responsibilities,” Instructor Randal Terrell said. “They don’t shy away from taking initiative. In Entrepreneurship practicum, we do as much as we can to push them into real world situations. You cant beat it.”

Students do in fact concur with this claim, going as far as working towards more student body interaction with the store.

“I do the eagle store, the announcements, and now V-tech.” Senior Harper Lee said. “Part of why I do all of that is because I, and a lot of us, will probably have a very similar job to this in the future, seeing as I’m going into business. We have to learn how to be presentable. We actually moved the store around because we learned through a psychological study that if you can see into the store, you are more likely to come in.”

As mentioned by Lee, V-tech is another program intertwined with Entrepreneurship Practicum which focuses on honing students technology skills.

“Just a little while ago we were updating all of the computers to Google’s current operating system,” he said. “We spent 3 weeks bringing carts down from the storage room to the library to update and work on them. Now, we are going to order more parts, update other computers around the school that need repairs, and have some fun.”

Students participating in the V-tech program will receive certification in “A+”, a technical support program. Much like them, Entrepreneurship Practicum students focused on any other area of the program are sure to be rewarded with experience and certification just as valuable.

“Practicum, to me as a whole, is the act of preparing students for life outside of high school,” Terrell said. “Its second to none, in traditional school you sit at a table and are not really pressured to interact with the person next to you or across the class. With the Journalism Practicum or my Entrepreneurship Practicum, we are able to put the students out into the school.”