At Alma Fuerte we love to provide a goal-achieving atmosphere that inspires our students to follow their dreams. We aim to help mold future entrepreneurs through different activities. Some of the parents in our Altadena community also have some of the entrepreneur spirit themselves as they own and run their own businesses. That kind of help exposes our students to what entrepreneurship looks like in some cases. In the past, we have had small business fairs in which our own students were the CEOs. They had the chance to sell the products that their businesses had to offer. Some of those products were made at school during our elective days. Electives also helped us introduce entrepreneurship to our students by allowing them to choose which trade, or activity they would want to participate in. This helped us give them chances to make their own choices like many entrepreneurs start off doing.
Since the invasion of COVID, we've turned to host virtual career days during our morning assemblies on zoom. Since our last career day with Mr. Kirhan Cheng, a corporate event planner with Capital Group, we've had a number of other guests join us during our online morning assemblies. These entrepreneurs have made our Career days with our students very informative and make entrepreneurship more and more appealing. They've shed light on some of the struggles with running and maintaining your own business and shared some helpful tips that can help our Eagles succeed as well.
On our last career day, we had Ms. Leah Ferrazzani, the owner of Semolina Artisanal Pasta in Altadena join us and speak to our students. She shared a little of her journey of making pasta in her laundry room to now owning her very own pasta shop. She did something a little different than the rest of our career day participants. Being that she was in the shop while on zoom with us, she chose to give us a tour! We got to go through the warehouse, which was full of boxes of pasta, and we got to see the kitchen where all the pasta is made. She showed us the pasta machines she uses in her shop, and talked us through a mini process of making and boxing pasta. Ferrazzani makes, sells, and ships this pasta to families and stores to sell as well. Our 4th and 5th graders had some good questions for her, one of them being "what position do you hold in your job?" Ms. Ferrazzani answered, "all of the jobs!" She even shared that she had to fix one of the machines before. This was good for our students to hear because entrepreneurs usually have so many jobs to handle before their business is successful. We hope these meetings inspire our students to think about and get started on their future businesses. We'll keep doing our part to promote and spark their brains with our entrepre-zoom-ership career days! For the full career day experience with Leah Ferrazzani, owner of Semolina Artisanal Pasta, you can watch the zoom video below: