Mini Society Teaches Marshall Students
about Commerce and Finance

When visitors enter Candy Village, a small “town” located in Linda Willey-Impagliazzo’s classroom at Marshall Elementary School, they are met with a bustling array of entrepreneurs eager to sell their products and services. If you have enough “Sweet Bucks” – the currency accepted in Candy Village– you might buy a homemade brownie, have your nails done at the salon, play a game of chance, pick out a hand made piece of jewelry, have your face painted, or line up to throw a ball at a tower of plastic cups to win a prize. 

“Our students create their own products or services to sell to other students,” Willey- Impagliazzo explains. “Then they do a profit/loss analysis to determine the success of their idea. When we hold another session in April, that helps them determine whether to repeat the same business or modify it to make it more profitable.” 

Everything related to the project is done by students, from electing a mayor to creating the design for the money, to advertising Candy Village to other students in the school. A total of eight classrooms visited Candy Village on February 17, representing students from second through fifth grade. Willey-Impagliazzo has been using the Mini Society approach since 1981, and has received extensive training through the University of Delaware’s Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship, which sponsors workshops on Mini Society. 

“I ask my former students years later what is the most memorable experience they remember from my class, and they always say Mini Society,” Willey-Impagliazzo said. As part of a research project she pursued for her master’s degree, she also learned that 67% of her former students followed careers in the same general area they had explored in the Mini Society project. The goal for this year’s class is to finance a trip to the Franklin Institute, which they hope to visit in May.