Why a Retired Teacher Started an Entrepreneurship Academy

I spent 27 years in Clark County Schools. Twenty-seven years of watching kids walk through the same hallways, sit through the same classes, and graduate into a world I wasn't always sure we'd prepared them for.

‍ ‍Here's the thing nobody tells you when you're a teacher: you don't get to see how the story ends. A student leaves your classroom in May, and unless you happen to run into them at the grocery store ten years later, you never really find out what happened to all that potential you watched up close for a year. Did the kid who was always selling something at lunch — candy, phone cases, whatever the trend was that month — ever turn that into something real? Did the one who asked more questions than I had answers for ever find a place that could keep up with her?

‍ ‍I retired wondering about a lot of those kids. And the honest answer, for most of them, is probably no. Not because they didn't have it in them. Because nothing in Clark County was built to catch that kind of energy and give it somewhere to go.

What 27 Years Teaches You

Twenty-seven years in a classroom teaches you things that don't show up in a curriculum. You learn to spot the kid who's already running a small hustle before they'd ever call it that — the one reselling things, fixing things, charging classmates for something they're good at. You learn that the kids who ask the most inconvenient questions are usually the ones with the most going on upstairs. And you learn, eventually, that a lot of real ambition in a small county quietly dies of exposure — not because the kid lacked it, but because nobody ever handed them a next step.

I also learned what Clark County actually has going for it. This isn't a town short on capable, hardworking people. It's a town that's never built the specific thing a fourteen-year-old with a business idea actually needs: a real coach, a real first customer, a real place to stand up and pitch what they built.

Why Now

I didn't start WCEA the week I retired. I started it because retirement gave me the one thing teaching never quite did — the time to actually build the thing I'd been thinking about for years, instead of just noticing the gap from inside a classroom.

Clark County doesn't have a talent problem. I watched that talent walk through my classroom for almost three decades. What it's never had is a pipeline — a free, structured, real path from "I have an idea" to "I built something." Not a class. Not a worksheet. An actual business, with an actual customer, judged by actual people from this community.

That's what Launch Lab is. Nine sessions, one fall, no business idea required to walk in the door. A coach in the room every single time — not a guest speaker, a constant presence — because if there's one thing 27 years taught me, it's that a kid is far more likely to become something if they can already picture someone who's done it, standing right next to them.

Why This, Specifically

I could have started a tutoring program. I know how to do that — I spent a career doing some version of it. I didn't, because tutoring helps a kid catch up to where they're supposed to be. This is for the kids who were always a little ahead of where the system knew what to do with them. The ones with the side hustle, the big idea, the question nobody had time to answer in a 50-minute period. ‍

Those are the kids I think about most, looking back on 27 years. WCEA is, in a lot of ways, the answer I wish had existed for them while I still had them in front of me.

What I'm Asking Of Winchester

I'm not asking this community to take a leap of faith on something untested. I'm asking it to back something built by someone who spent almost three decades inside its schools, who knows exactly which kids this is for, and who's done watching that kind of potential leave Clark County because nobody built the bridge.

We're building it now. If you're a Clark County business owner who's done this before, we need you in the room as a coach. If you believe in what this could become, we need founding sponsors who'll be part of the story from year one. And if you know a teenager with more ambition than outlet for it — that's exactly who this is for. ‍

Twenty-seven years gave me a long list of kids I wonder about. I'd like the next twenty-seven to give me a long list of answers instead.

Want to get involved as a coach, a sponsor, or a parent looking to enroll a student? Reach out directly — John Chaney, 859-556-2902, john.chaney1970@icloud.com.