As people packed a classroom to buy succulents and wandering dude plants, Neriah Baldwin, a fourth grader at Eagle Charter School, sat at a desk, overseeing it all.
During a school showcase on Tuesday night, Baldwin was in charge of a room full of plants that third grade students spent months raising from seeds.
When the project started around four months ago, Baldwin, one of two older co-managers, said she liked helping the younger students work together and get to know one another.
“I barely knew all these people … but later this year, I’ll really know these people,” she said, remembering how she felt when the project started.
The evening, called Micro Night, was the culmination of months of work by Eagle Charter students who participated in the school’s MicroSociety classes. They spent months learning about civic engagement, entrepreneurship and community involvement.
Eagle Charter is a small elementary charter school that is located on the Oregon School for the Deaf’s campus in the Highland neighborhood.
This year was the first time students’ projects were turned into a small fundraiser for the school where parents could watch or take home students’ art, research and performance projects.
Over the school year, students in kindergarten through fifth grade took financial literacy lessons, heard from local business and nonprofit leaders and worked on projects that supported Salem organizations, according to Principal Marie Ballance.
Students made colorful greeting cards for Salem Dogs, a local animal rescue, and donated supplies to Salem for Refugees, an agency that helps refugees settle in the Salem community.
Some students especially interested in business, including Baldwin, took an extra business management class and participated in a student-run simulated economy called BizTown earlier this month. The event brought together fourth through sixth grade students across Oregon and southwest Washington.
Baldwin was one of the Eagle Charter students who went to the May 9 event, where she was a CEO, she said.
“I like being the top dog,” she said. She likes that management means getting to be in charge while helping others.
At Tuesday’s Micro Night, Baldwin easily managed the plant sales and helped give people instructions for caring for the succulents and other plants, including pothos and wandering dudes.
In other classrooms, teachers watched over their students’ projects that ranged from magnets inspired by modern art, a play on ancient China performed by fifth graders, stickers coordinating with different countries and cards decorated with monsters wearing braces.
In a classroom, Tim Dickson, a first grade teacher, greeted parents and children with a smile, asking about old students and showing parents which cards their child made.
On Tuesday night, his classroom was filled with dozens of cards made by his students and the kindergarten class next door.
When one kindergartener first started drawing for the card project, Dickson said he had no idea what she was drawing and she wrote her letters backwards. But after several months of practice and videos on how to draw dogs, her drawing improved and he started recognizing her artwork.
Several teachers echoed Dickson’s thoughts on the impact MicroSociety has on students and shared stories of how the classes give students chances to grow their confidence and practice creativity and business skills.
Contact reporter Madeleine Moore: [email protected].
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Madeleine Moore came to Salem after graduating from the University of Oregon in June 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She covers addiction and recovery, transportation and infrastructure.
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