Flowers, Flowers Everywhere! (Week 14)

This week was pretty spectacular! I had been waiting for this week all semester long. In my Ag Business Management class, we are doing a unit on floral design. To incorporate business, I held the first flower sale that Mohawk has ever had. Last week, I taught the students how to make a centerpiece. They all looked at me like with a blank stare. Now that the students know what to do, they just go! We sold and made a total of 22 pre-ordered arrangements. This whole unit was a blast to teach, but there are a lot of things I would do differently.

1. Open it up to all high school faculty and staff. The students wanted to sell to their families instead. I thought, "Why not?" We only received about 17-18 orders from the students. The week the orders were due, I opened it up to faculty and staff because I wanted to try and sell at least 20. We got all the orders in a couple days later than expected, but it still worked out in the end. I needed to get the order forms out earlier and to the right people. The students didn't push the sale, which is why we didn't get as many orders as expected. 
2. Have students create a mock-up arrangement to use for the flyer. This would have given people a clearer picture of what the arrangement would look like. This could have helped with the sales a lot more. 
3. Teach students about pricing before the centerpiece sale. I tried to do this... but I went over it really quickly. The students got really confused. I needed to take one to two days to go through with students how to price a flower arrangement. Students would be less confused to what was going on. 

Although there were some downfalls during this sale, students thought it was the best part of class. They see that all the work they did before the sale led up to what was going on. The picture became clear to them. If I am to do this again as a teacher, I would definitely make these changes for a smoother sale. 

Until next week, 

Ms. Yoest