Left to right: Nate Kline-teacher, Jaiden Rickett, Lauren Albrecht, Luke Rodbell, Aiden Donges, Autumn Wright, Chole Minton, Emily Jones, Tim Glockner, and Mike Thompson standing with the check from the Dare to Dream Project.
Chloe Minton and Luke Rodbell team leaders for their groups that placed at the Dare to Dream Contest.
Being an entrepreneur and owning your own business is the dream of some students at Portsmouth High School.
These students spent the first half of the school year preparing, by entering the Dare to Dream Project contest. The seven students were not the only creative students at PHS to enter the contest, but they were the only ones to get money for their work.
The Dare to Dream teams, started in August in Nate Kline’s business class at PHS. “We make it our big project for the year and they have a school competition here on February 28th and in that, we select our top three teams in our school to represent us in the Ohio Semifinals and from there, we had two teams to represent us in the Finals,” Kline said.
Thompson is also the director of Dare to Dream. “This is an Economic Development Corporation Tech Growth of Ohio, to develop business, that’s how we got started, we were challenged with how to get people interested in entrepreneurism. We decided to start at the high school level because nobody had ever done a high school level type contest and every year we have been involved, we’ve increased the amount of money we have given away to students,” Thompson said. “The first year we only gave away $10,000, this year we gave away a total of $34,000. We had the highest number of student teams participating with a total of 51 teams that were involved in the program this year. For the final that these two teams made it to, there were only 14 teams that made it to the finals.
“You just saw that the winning teams won $7,750 and each student received a check for $1,900 and that’s not scholarship money, there are no strings attached, it is their money, that is what entrepreneurism is all about, capitalism, you go out and work hard, you make money and it’s yours,” Thompson said.
Thompson said when he needed a title sponsor, he went to Andy Glockner. “Absolutely, I’ll be your title sponsor,” Glockner said. Thompson says that was $5000 the first year and they’ve been the title sponsor every year and now they are a $10,000 title sponsor. “We would never have had the program, if Andy hadn’t gotten involved and because he said ‘I believe in the youth of Portsmouth,’ “ Thompson said.
According to both team leaders, it was a lot of work and they said it mainly took a lot of time. These teams created their work in their business class and said it was part of their grade, but that anyone can do it if they would want to do so.
“Kline was one of the first teachers that made it a class project and gave them a grade on it,” Thompson said. “Nate is the premier teacher of this.
“They require a mentor, so I start it in my class in August and we start brainstorming ideas for business ideas and get to work, until February, when we, for our school competition, pick the best to represent our school,” Kline said. “The majority of it is improv, work on the presentation and putting together a pitch and everything.
In the school competition, Kline said they asked local leaders to be judge. “We ask local business people to be judges and coaches to move forward,, and I’d like to recognize the Smith Family group, Doc Spartan, and Angie Duduit from Shawnee State University for helping give advice to our students moving forward.” Both Thompson and Kline said Duduit was so very helpful to the students.