Greeting Card Co. Say it with a card, and support integrated learning. Ben Barber Career Tech Academy in Mansfield ISD has established a greeting card company inside the school to teach students real-world business applications and solutions.

The project, now in it's second year and named Pickle Productions Greeting Card Company, was first created out of a grant last school year.

Cathy Dunn Slagle, M.Ed., Marketing/Diversified Career Preparation, is the lead teacher for this project and she believes having an integrated approach has tremendous value for students.

“We were looking for a way to combine an ongoing project with the efforts from several different departments,” said Slagle.

“I wanted students to experience what it is like to work with different departments to complete a job just like you would do in a corporation, to manage the business and create the marketing strategies to bring the cards to market.”

How integrated is this project?

English, graphic arts, special needs, and marketing all have hands in this company:

English Department students uisng the art of poetry writing to provide greeting card sentiments;
Graphic Arts Department students use thepoetry ideas to inspire original designs or vice versa, either way letting the students see that their work was marketable;
Occupational Discovery classes have the special needs students participate in beneficial jobs learning the business basics of packaging; and
Marketing/Diversified Career Preparation students completed a business plan, projected financials, created marketing strategies, operational and management procedures as well as sales techniques all in coordination between the other departments.

After the winter break, the Pickle Productions Greeting Card Company students will get right back to work on their Valentine's Day card catalog which should be available mid-January, 2010.