Business-minded students in Spring Woods High’s awards-winning Junior Achievement program have designed and crafted dozens of aquatics-themed handmade table lamps out of donated bottles. The student-built lamps will be auctioned off to the highest bidders Feb. 29 during the annual Crystal Awards Gala.
The 15th annual dinner and gala celebration is sponsored by the Spring Branch Education Foundation (SBEF) and the Houston Chronicle. This year’s gala theme is “An Evening to Honor Teachers, Our Gulf Coast Gems.”
During the gala, six outstanding regional teachers – including film instructor Patty Nilsson of The Guthrie Center – will be recognized, as well as 2007’s SBISD Teachers of the Year.
Spring Woods High’s Junior Achievement table lamp project is the latest in a series of highly successful sales and marketing programs created by about 40 students who organize and run their own JA corporation, known as Woods Inc., or WINC.
Career and Technology instructor Estie Cuellar, who holds a master’s degree in business administration, has helped nurture and grow the burgeoning JA chapter during the past three years.
Crystal Awards auction proceeds from lamp sales will benefit Spring Branch ISD students.
So far this year, WINC has designed, printed and sold out a popular line of high school spirit t-shirts. The student program has won multiple awards and ranked near the top in sales at JA and community-sponsored events and fairs. Its students sponsored a highly rated community service project at Westwood Elementary School where they taught JA’s business and economics model to 18 separate third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classrooms.
At JA’s annual Trade Fair, the students made more than $500 by selling lamps, fashioned out of donated, empty wine bottles. SBISD Board of Trustees member Mary Grace Landrum spotted the one-of-a-kind accessories during that event, then promoted the project to SBEF.
Crystal Awards Gala co-chairs Patty and Bruce Busmire encouraged the students to design more lamps as table centerpieces. The auction lamps cost about $60 to assemble and have themes that range from deserted islands and beaches to underwater scenes and lighthouses.
Auction proceeds will support programs for all 32,000 SBISD students through SBEF, with a portion returned to the student program at Spring Woods High.
While a measure of success, auction proceeds mean less to Estie Cuellar than what has occurred during the last year within the JA-related program.
Many student-built lamps had nautical themes for the gala auction.
WINC’s officers and members plan, create, organize and then run their own organization. They draw up marketing plans, pay program bills, balance their own books and “hire” staff as need for green-lighted projects.
“Students this year have been organized, energetic and involved, and I see a new leadership team forming for next year,” Cuellar said before the gala. “My goal is to offer an opportunity for students to realize their potential and to grow beyond what they think that they can do. We hope that their successes this year will push them and other students to take more chances.”
Her students aim high. Seniors are headed to Bowdoin, Baylor and Texas A&M universities, among other college destinations.
“I think that we all learned why we are here – to learn the basic knowledge needed to start up and run a small business,” said Kim Ngo, a senior who is WINC’s vice president of production.
