Thursday, January 25, 2018

SHARKS ATTACK THE HALLS OF WASHINGTONVILLE HIGH

By MICHAEL DEPAOLO

Rumor has it that Washingtonville High School is overflowing with budding entrepreneurs.  The students taking Economics and Government showed their business skills in this year’s highly anticipated Shark Tank project. Each year, seniors pitch their startup business ideas to a sometimes skeptical panel of judges.  This project is loosely based off the television show called Shark Tank and some of the judges included Mr. Bruscino, Mr. White, Mr. Sale and Mrs, Secreto.   
For those who have never seen the show, Shark Tank is a TV show currently airing on ABC.  The concept of the show is this:  entrepreneurs pitch an original product or idea to potential investors.  These investors are referred to as sharks due to their reputation of attacking those whose ideas are not up to their standards.  At Washingtonville High, the sharks are actually teachers in the building who also have a reputation for attacking sub par projects
MICHAEL DEPAOLO FOR THE WIZARD WEEKLY
The Shark Tank project is organized by teachers, Mrs. Secreto and Mr. Bruscino.  It was designed to give students in their classes a chance to experience the various facets of presentation and salesmanship that they study in the class.
The project was originally started by Mrs. Smith, who is now teaching at the middle school, and over the years it has really taken off.  It went from a three page packet to multiple packets, excessive planning, presentations, creating websites, and even sometimes prototypes for products.  All of this takes place over the course of an entire marking period.   Students who decide to put little to no effort into it, fail the marking period. This is why it is crucial to make this project a priority. 
Mr. Bruscino explained, “I really took this project from Mrs. Smith and all of the other Economics teachers and I made it into something much bigger.”  Each year the teachers talk about how excited they get when this time of year rolls around.  The ideas and products the students come up with are very creative and inventive. 
This year, one of the groups came up with the idea to have a diner right here in Washingtonville with a bit of a twist.  The diner would have trained dogs for servers.  They also came up with the clever name of K9 & Dine.  Senior Tarek Abu-Zeid stated, “My group and I thought this would be a cool thing to do especially here in Washingtonville.  It gives people something more to do.”
There are so many other inventive products and businesses that WHS students have come up with over the years.  Many of the underclassmen are already talking about how they are looking forward to this project and cannot see what they and their classmates come up with in the years to come.

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