At its most basic level, a startup is a learning machine—one that helps its founders understand and serve the real world in a manner that enables itself to continuously gather information and grow. If it doesn’t learn and adjust, a startup ends. Successful students, like startups, are those who are resilient, constantly absorbing new information and challenging their assumptions. We’re not surprised, then, to see a proliferation of startup and entrepreneurial programs springing up in and around K-12 schools. What’s more, an entrepreneurial culture, carefully scaffolded, can help schools transform and unlock learning in ways that more traditional coursework cannot. What follows is a tour through some programs that offer students the chance to engage in entrepreneurial thinking before they enter college. Although we would never encourage a school leader to drop any one model in its entirety into an existing school, savvy educators should be able to appropriate and adapt choice bits and moments of what follows. Like a startup, developing a sustainable entrepreneurial program in your school begins with an impulse to make something new, and succeeds or fails based on your team’s ability to support the venture as it iterates, pivots and grows. Ultimately, we want to prepare young people to change the world—when they are equipped and ready to do just that. Entrepreneurship as a Standalone Option Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, is an all girls PK-12 independent school. They offer two entrepreneurship programs, a Capstone Program and the Veale Venture Challenge. Covering four years, the entrepreneurship category of the Capstone Program asks high school students to lead and drive their own learning. Whether participating in bi-weekly discussions based on articles selected by the students themselves, visiting with entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, or meeting with expert mentors in the field, students develop a research focus before they graduate. The Veale Venture Challenge is an open program for high school students. Through a series of steps—including the development of a business plan and a presentation to investors—it aims to help students start a business while they are still in the school. “At Laurel School, we know that being an entrepreneur is a mindset, one that requires resiliency, problem solving, and passion,” says physics teacher Taylor Kaar, who also serves as Director of Entrepreneurship. “These are skills and traits that we feel are universally desirable today, and we know that the skills a girl learns at Laurel School’s entrepreneurship offerings will be transferable to any field.” Entrepreneurial Thinking as Curricular Strand Louisville Collegiate is a JK–12, co-ed day school in Louisville, Ky. Unlike the Laurel School, whose programs are open to self-selecting, entrepreneurially-minded students, Louisville Collegiate pushes entrepreneurial thinking into much of its curricular offerings. In the lower and middle-school grades, for example, developing an entrepreneurial mindset is the key to student success. Students are taught and encouraged to apply some of the central tenets of entrepreneurialism, including empathy, reflection and the identification of problems as opportunities. Then, in sixth grade, such flexible thinking bears fruit as students complete a STEAM project requiring them to research a local problem (in this case, water pollution), work in teams, design and test water filters. …an entrepreneurial culture, carefully scaffolded, can help schools transform and unlock learning in ways that more traditional coursework cannot. In terms of entrepreneurial programming, Louisville Collegiate may be best known for its wide-ranging…