Sound Seafoods, Alaska Premier Bait Company, Alaska's Smokehouse and Fish Co. and the Alaska Pulp Corporation - all under the umbrella of Edgecumbe Enterprises. The "parent company" started its first salmon-processing plant in 1985, run by students themselves. The goal was to give students the skills and experience needed for running an import-export business aimed at Asian markets. By the 1988-89 year, the company was already making four annual shipments of smoked salmon to Japan. Each subsidiary company now links hands-on experience with the academic curricula. So math students calculate the dollar-yen exchange rate. Pacific Rim geography is studied in social studies. Art students design promotional brochures and package labels for products. And business and computer students learn how to develop spreadsheets to analyze costs and project prices.7
      Myron Tribus provides a word picture of how the business projects link with other studies: "In the class on entrepreneurship, taught by Marty Johnson, I watched the students prepare and package smoked salmon for sale in Japan. The students had used a taste panel of local Japanese to determine the flavor and texture Japanese people liked the most. They then developed a standard procedure to produce the same taste and texture every time. To achieve the desired taste required using a certain kind of salmon, exposing it for a certain time and temperature, using a special brining solution, which they had determined experimentally yielded the proper taste, and a certain amount of time in the smoke from the right mixture of wood shavings, using slices of fish cut to a certain thickness and size. By studying the packages of smoked fish sold in Japan, they developed an attractive package which would fit in small Japanese refrigerators. They developed their own distinctive label, in Japanese of course. And they test-marketed the product in Japan."8 That marketing includes study trips to Japan and other Pacific rim countries.
      All students learn either Chinese or Japanese, and their curriculum is strong in the history, culture and languages of the Pacific rim, English, social studies, mathematics, science, marine science, computers, business, and physical education.
      The school's mission statement stresses that "opportunities for leadership, public service and entrepreneurship are integrated into the program, both during and after regular school hours".
      Each student is assisted, guided and challenged to make choices about future academic or technical schooling and alternative methods of making a living. Enter a business class and you'll watch students preparing

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