Beyond Entrepreneurship: CAST Schools Students Put Durable Skills to Work

For CAST Tech senior Sophia Camacho, entrepreneurship wasn't a pathway she had been pursuing. She had never built a business plan and wasn't necessarily imagining herself starting a company.

Three days later, she saw things differently.

“I have that experience now,” Camacho said, “and I feel confident that if I had a business idea in the future, I could definitely know the steps to take it further from just an idea.”

That shift—from having an idea to understanding how to act on it—was at the heart of a new partnership between CAST Schools and VentureLab that brought students together for an intensive experience in entrepreneurship and design thinking.

Through VentureLab IGNITE, students moved through a three-day progression of Imagine, Build, and Launch: identifying meaningful problems, developing and researching potential solutions, creating prototypes and business models, and ultimately learning to communicate and pitch their ideas.

For Camacho and her teammates, the problem was close to home.

Their project, SA Connect, grew from a shared observation about living in San Antonio: there is always something happening, but finding events and opportunities that match an individual's interests can be difficult.

“We picked it because a lot of us could relate through our own background knowledge of knowing that there's so much going on in San Antonio,” Camacho said.

The students brought different experiences to the problem. One teammate, a small-business owner, had struggled to find networking and outreach opportunities for her events. Camacho knew the challenge from the other side: as someone with varied interests, she found it difficult to discover everything she might want to attend in one centralized place.

So the students started building.

They researched the problem, interviewed stakeholders, explored the potential market, developed their idea, and worked toward a solution they could put in front of others.

“The second day was a lot more ideation, making sure that we get to talk about what we care about,” Camacho said. “From there it was just slowly building on it—from doing our research, doing stakeholder interviews and such—until the last day, where it all finally came together.”

For mentor Dr. Marvin Hetzel, watching that process revealed something else: the students already knew how to work together.

Hetzel watched members of the SA Connect team arrange themselves in a circle, laptops open, with students tackling different pieces of the project simultaneously. Smaller conversations happened between students working on related tasks, while ideas continued moving across the larger group.

“They were very comfortable working together,” Hetzel said.

In fact, their approach impressed him enough that he found himself learning from the students' process.

Within only a few hours, he watched them move from concept development to practice and presentation—a pace he attributed in part to the skills students had already developed before arriving at VentureLab.

“That could only be done if their teaching at CAST Schools has brought them to this doorstep,” Hetzel said.

That observation gets at something larger than entrepreneurship.

CAST Schools students are routinely asked to communicate ideas, collaborate with others, think critically about complex problems, respond to feedback, and apply their learning in authentic settings. Experiences like VentureLab give them a new environment in which to put those capabilities to work and discover where else those skills can take them.

CAST STEM educator Ivan Medina saw that happening as students worked alongside peers from other CAST Schools Network campuses.

“They have a lot of skills already, but they're bringing their skills here,” Medina said, describing the experience as an opportunity to amplify students' analysis, evaluation and critical-thinking abilities.

The cross-campus collaboration also exposed students to people with different ideas and experiences, requiring them to listen, communicate, negotiate, and build something together.

And throughout the process, students weren't working alone.

VentureLab Founder and Interim Executive Director Cristal Glangchai said community mentors were intentionally brought into the experience because students were developing ideas spanning different industries and interests.

Those professionals could offer expertise and perspectives students might not otherwise encounter.

But mentorship didn't mean adults taking over.

Camacho described a balance between independence and support that allowed students to maintain ownership of their work.

“They got to let the reins go and we got to kind of do our thing on our own, but it made us feel supported,” she said.

Mentors questioned assumptions, identified weaknesses and challenged students to keep developing their solutions. When teams hit a roadblock or needed to pivot, adults were there to help them think through what came next.

“They were pushers,” Camacho said. “They pushed us to do more.”

That combination—student ownership paired with meaningful relationships, feedback, and authentic expectations—is central to how CAST Schools approaches learning.

It also matters because entrepreneurship was only the context. The capabilities students were practicing extend much further.

Camacho believes that's especially important for students like her whose academic or career pathway isn't entrepreneurship.

“It builds a lot of soft skills that'll help us in the future,” she said. “Whether it's just learning how to speak better, learning how to communicate with each other better, and connecting us directly with these organizations that help build up other entrepreneurs.”

The experience was designed to make those capabilities visible. Unlike a certificate awarded simply for participating, the VentureLab Entrepreneurship & Design Thinking Certification™ requires students to demonstrate competency by applying the design-thinking process, developing and pitching a venture, completing assessments and reflections, and presenting their solutions to professionals and community judges.

Students practiced skills ranging from critical thinking and problem-solving to communication, collaboration, adaptability, leadership, and professional presentation.

And for some students, the experience is extending beyond the certification itself.

SA Connect and another student team were invited to present their ideas during San Antonio Startup + Tech Week, extending their work into a larger community of entrepreneurs and professionals. The Youth Entrepreneurship Summit includes opportunities for students to engage with mentors, showcase their work, and present ideas to an external audience.

But advancing to another stage isn't the most important outcome.

The larger accomplishment may be what happens when a young person encounters a problem and begins to think: I know how to do something about this.

Hetzel saw that possibility while watching the students work. His advice to the adults around them was simple: provide support, encouragement, and opportunities—and trust young people with the rest.

“They'll do the rest,” he said.

Help give students the opportunity to imagine, build, and lead. Through the Youth Leadership in Action campaign, your support helps CAST Schools create authentic learning experiences that connect young people with mentors, community partners, and opportunities to put their ideas and skills into action.

Support Youth Leadership in Action and help more students discover what they can do.