At Wasilla High School, a student-run apparel shop shows why algebra matters

WASILLA — Students at Wasilla High School know there’s no time for daydreaming over math equations when you’re running a hot apparel business out of your algebra class.

The students are participating in Wasilla’s AMPED on Algebra curriculum rolled out this year in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District. About 20 freshmen and sophomores have made and sold 632 custom shirts and sweatshirts — about $13,000 worth — to school groups and local businesses since starting class in mid-August, all while solving the age-old quandary of what algebra has to do with anything.

Using math and business skills taught through a double class block four days a week, the students use freshly learned concepts to calculate needed supplies, cash flow, overhead and income. They’ll earn both algebra and career and technical education credits while also developing a series of business plans and operating the apparel shop out of the classroom.

“Instead of us giving them a word problem, they see this is what algebra is for,” said Leslie Varys, one of two teachers who oversees the class and its shirt business. “They actually get something tangible, because not only have you done the math, but we’ve talked about, ‘Oh, we’re down some money on this,’ or ‘What’s the cost if you make a mistake here? Does that affect the numbers directly?’”

‘The math is fun’

One recent Wednesday morning, about 15 students worked on their final assignment of the semester from computers scattered around the classroom, while about five others stood over a pair of square blue shirt presses, meticulously measuring the placement of shirt decals, lowering the press to heat the shirt for a few seconds, then removing it for delivery.

At one press, students put the finishing touches on 16 custom shirts ordered by Ptarmigan Pediatrics in Wasilla. At the other, three churned out a rush order from local school athletic directors who wanted matching shirts for an upcoming conference. Spreadsheets, posters and giant Post-it notes scattered around the classroom tallied orders and apparel work waiting to be done.

“The math is fun,” sophomore Kaitlyn Severs, 15, said as she folded a pile of freshly printed shirts. “It’s not hard math — you work into it. And it’s really fun.”

The class uses four shirt presses purchased through school and district funding, while money to purchase the classroom’s original supplies was donated by community members, said Robin Lockwood, the other algebra teacher who leads the class.

This is the Mat-Su district’s first school year including the Algebra in Manufacturing Processes, Entrepreneurship and Design curriculum, known as AMPED, district officials said. While Mat-Su Career & Technical High School in Wasilla and Houston Middle School are also using versions of the curriculum, neither have started selling products.

The Anchorage School District has been using the program in Service and West high schools since the 2022-23 school year, officials there said.

Hard lessons

The business success of the Wasilla class started with what could’ve been a costly mistake, said Lockwood. Confident they could sell orders at scheduled school sporting events, Lockwood used the donated seed money to purchase $6,000 worth of materials.

But when bad weather changed the schedules of those games and meets, the class suddenly had a lot of material on hand and no one to buy it.

That’s when the students really got to work, Lockwood said, drumming up business from the community and school, marketing their company and using the business and math skills they were learning to understand how to keep their business afloat while still producing a quality product.

That includes sophomore Landon Furrer, 15, who cold-called a Wasilla business where he plays Dungeons & Dragons and ended up selling them an order of five shirts, Lockwood said. He also recently aced a quiz on linear systems, an algebraic concept that challenges many students, she said.

“We actually use what we’re learning constantly,” Furrer said. “If you learn to do math, eventually it applies in business somewhere down the line. In most classes it’s just there. But this? We actually have something associated with this time.”

That doesn’t mean the printing process is without hiccups.

Since the work is done by the students and the quality can vary, the apparel is currently only marked up $1 from the cost of supplies, Lockwood said. And when one student misunderstood the instructions and pressed a decal on the wrong side of the shirt of a recent rush order and no extra supplies on hand, the team had to work together to come up with a solution that would work for both the project and the client.

“It’s good for them to see mistakes,” Varys said. “Especially in math, we always want them to make a mistake. How are you going to learn if you don’t make a mistake? So we’re learning.”

[Dozens of kids with blurry vision didn’t have eyeglasses. An Anchorage school nurse stepped in to help.]

Investment on many levels

Unlike the traditional algebra classes Varys and Lockwood also teach, where about 30 students learn math principles and take traditional quizzes and tests from a single teacher over a single class period, the students here benefit from a much smaller class size, a double time block and two dedicated teachers.

That means Varys and Lockwood spend more time with these students than any others, they said, giving them a chance to get to know each pupil in a way that doesn’t happen in a traditional math class.

“They know that this is a special kind of class,” she said. “They are getting our investment more, and seeing our investment more.”

The class takes orders through a Google form.

Product prices range from $10 to $35, depending on style of apparel and logo size, with extra decals on the back or sleeves costing more. The class keeps shirts on hand in school colors — white, gray and black — in a variety of sizes, but can order other colors and sizes as needed, Lockwood said.

For now, any profits go back into buying supplies and keeping the project going, Lockwood said. But eventually she hopes the students can share any excess through donations or other projects.

“The real goal is to talk about how we are going to spend this money because we need to reinvest it,” she said. “We need to invest in ourselves, but we also want to invest in other tangible ways that can help our community.”