Messenger - Vol. 3, No. 3, Page 12 Spring 1994 Ronni Cohen reinvents the classroom Each day, Ronni Cohen's fourth graders enter her classroom under a cluster of embroidery hoops decorated with spider web designs. They are dream catchers, made by the children to represent the Native American legend of the spider whose web allows good dreams to pass through while blocking the bad. Like the dream catcher, Cohen, Delaware '69, makes it her job to guide her students throught the web of "real-world" pitfalls that could inhibit dreams. For the past 18 years, she has been teaching her students the principles of economics and the skills necessary to become successful entrepreneurs. "They learn how to do things like budget their time, and budgeting time is an important entrepreneurial skill. That's what entrepreneurship is - reality," Cohen says. She routinely asks her gifted and talented students at M. H. Burnett Elementary School in Wilmington, Del., to invent, produce and market products. Creating and running their own business requires them to master creative thinking, research, math, reading, writing and mechanical skills - skills that most educators use textbooks to teach. For a recent project, they had to invent something that would help people eat spaghetti more neatly. The project was called "Pastamania." With each entrepreneurial project, Cohen's students are required to keep an inventor's portfolio in which they write a design abstract and log their thoughts, progress, difficulties, research and amount of time spent thinking about and working on their projects. The portfolio requires a brainstorming session to come up with a name for the product, using word play and unusual lettering. They must design their invention on paper, list the land, labor and capital requirements needed to produce it and calculate the costs involved. Students conduct a market survey and graph a supply schedule, which includes determining the market clearing price. They create an advertising campaign and when they are done, the students, their peers and the teacher evaluate each product based on a demonstration. For Pastamania, parents brought in spaghetti and video cameras to record real-life demonstrations of "Leyla's Loony Linguini Looper," the "Super Slicer Spaghetti Sweeper" and "Spingetti," created so that "one of life's embarrassing moments will never happen to you." The demonstrations had to be executed by a student bystander who had to figure out how to use the instrument solely from instructions written by the inventor. Her passionate dedication to the teaching of economics has won Cohen national recognition. Last December, she was named Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year during a ceremony held in Palm Springs. She was selected out of 85 nominees from across the country. "It was just like the Academy Awards. I was one of three finalists, and no one knew who was going to win," she says. On top of the $5,000 she received as a finalist, Cohen was given a trophy and a $15,000 stipend to spend a summer studying at the Kauffman Foundation Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. She was profiled in the December issue of INC magazine and became the first educator to be named to the Entrepreneur of the Year Hall of Fame. In 1992, she won the National Federation of Independent Bussiness Award for Elementary Education for a unit of the materials she created for her class. Cohen, who was born in Winthrop, Mass., has been an elementary school teacher in Delaware since she graduated from the University. But, it wasn't until 1976, when she began taking courses at the University's Center for Economic Education and met Director James O'Neill and Associate Director Bonnie J. Meszaros that she realized how she wanted to teach. "They influenced my whole career. They showed me how the study of economics can make the school day exciting for kids, especially when the competition includes video games, television and movies." Cohen would like to see her inventor's portfolio used to teach economics across the country. She'd also like to write a complete workbook on entrepreneurship for kids, stressing self-examination of their interests and attitudes, because as Ronni Cohen says, "In life, you really have to sell yourself." -Barbara Garrison