Charger entrepreneurs: Student-owned businesses Teaching Abroad

Gwen Carroll Staff Writer

customer-requested designs and is available on Shopify and eBay. Zheng collaborates with many in-state and national artists who send their finished work to him two weeks after a design is input. Although Zheng is not directly

Alumnus of the school and its current economics teacher, Rob Miller, Social Studies Department, did not get his start teaching at the school. Rather, his career began at The American School located in Switzerland, and he has taught at schools in England, Switzerland and Greece.

Miller’s post-graduation plans had never included teaching until his experience abroad—in fact, teaching as a career had not even occurred to him until he received an offer from his cousin to come to the school overseas. He had not had many chances to travel internationally as a child. As such, he greatly enjoyed his teaching experience in Europe— for instance, small classes of less than 15 students meant he could teach on a more personal level than at a public school. Nevertheless, the job could be

“I taught at boarding schools, so not only did the students live in campus dormitories, but so did I. It was a lot of fun, but it meant I always had to be the adult in the room, which could get very suffocating,” Miller said.

Luu hopes to expand B.E.L. Bakes and continue adding to her online profile, selling merchandise, recipe books and other items on top of the information spreads rapidly, efficiently reaching the intended audience. From selling handcrafted jewelry to homemade slime, small businesses rely heavily on social media to increase sales.

Mocha and Macs is another baking business owned by Senior Kylie Duong who sells her products through Instagram. Duong created a separate Instagram account focused money to start up small businesses can be difficult. As reported by Fundera, a financial advice website, around 20% of small businesses fail within their first year of being established. The difficulty of recieving bank loans is a major contributor to this. Because of inflation, the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates, causing an increase in the cost of taking out loans. Letha Pugh, a cofounder of a small baking business in Ohio called Bake Me Happy, no process would be made on her loan due to bureaucracy and rules surrounding business loans. confident in their clothing and to be proud of themselves out in public,” Zheng said.

Despite the unforeseeable risks of managing an independent business can bring, many will still choose this path to pursue their interests.

All three high school entrepreneurs have faith in their individual growing businesses, inspiring others to pursue their own passions and interests.

As the schools were all Anglophone workplaces, he never struggled with language barriers during work hours. Miller was able to navigate England without trouble, though in Switzerland and Greece, he began to encounter some difficulty. Simply navigating the countries outside the school was troublesome because Miller spoke none of the local languages. However, the locals helped him out where they could, and after a few years of teaching in Greece, he began to pick up a bit of Greek while off the job.

After over a decade abroad, Miller returned to San Jose and taught at several schools in the area before settling back down at the school. He even spent a year in a corporate job, but decided that teaching was his best option. His experience abroad was a great help to his teaching now—Miller maintains that despite the differences between the student bodies, teaching abroad and at the school were not extremely different. Although the income difference between the student bodies is vast, he explained that at the end of the day, his students are mostly the same.

“In the end, kids are kids, and they all have hobbies and problems, no matter what school they go to. Returning here for me feels like returning to some sort of mothership; I enjoy the familiarity of teaching at the school I used to attend. As a teacher, there are not many places that are much better than here,” Miller said.