Merced High School students in Juan Del Toro’s CTE Entrepreneurship class are learning what it’s like running a business with Paw Prints. The student-led T-shirt printing business is in its second year of operation out of classroom 205. Paw Prints has designed and printed shirts for various school clubs and sports teams and outside businesses. 

 

Using two heat presses, Del Toro’s three capstone classes consisting of about 120 students have completed 40 jobs to date. The average job involves creating 40 to 60 shirts. “It started last year with about 20 kids,” Del Toro said. “After the kids saw what we were doing last year, I have three capstone classes this year with about 40 students each. Only a certain number of students can be working at the same time, but everyone gets a turn. They’re coming up with their own designs, designs they can work with an advisor or coach, and then go from there.”

 

On Monday, members of the Paw Prints team were busy creating pink jerseys for the Merced High girls flag football program. Some focused on lining up the prints and using the hot presses, while others worked on new T-shirt designs to pitch to clubs and teams across campus. “The goal is to use all of their business skills,” Del Toro said. “So they are producing the product, they’re creating the product, they’re selling and preselling so we don’t have stock left behind.  so producing it. They're creating it. Okay, now you gotta go sell it, or pre-sell it, so we don't have stock left behind. They’re working on  idea generation, target audience, and customer service.”

 

So far Paw Prints have created staff shirts this year. They created special T-shirts for when the school honored football coach Rob Scheidt on his 30th year with the program. They’ve created shirts for the softball team, flag football, tennis and cross country. 

 

“It’'s been a really fun experience,” said Merced High senior Mariah Fuentes. “It's never something that I really pictured myself doing, learning how to make the shirts and stuff. It's been really fun and it's nice to be able to help all the clubs and stuff with the shirts. It's cool seeing staff and students around campus wearing shirts that I helped make.”

 

Fuentes says she’s received positive feedback on the shirts and jerseys Paw Prints have created. Del Toro says the plan is to expand to more items as they receive more tools. “I’m thankful for the district support, getting all the material, setting it up, and just saying yes to (what I’ve asked for),” Del Toro said. The plan is to expand. We're getting laser tools to do cups, mugs and other things. Hopefully we’ll move into a bigger room because we want to give back to the community and the school, because mainly it's for the school.”

 

Merced High senior Camden Gudgel is one of the students who has taken business classes from Del Toro all four years and he’s been with Paw Prints since the beginning. He’s designed shirts for his cross country team. 

 

“My cross country team was looking for shirts, and we thought, well, we have the resources here,” Gudgel said. “We just bought the t-shirt press. We're looking for an outlet to use it. So I drafted my original design. It went through a couple different iterations, and we kind of really figured it all out. And then we started making the pattern that expanded into softball, flag football, into all the different events on campus, and then eventually all the staff shirts. So it was a really cool starting point and it was cool to be a part of it and watch how it has grown exponentially. I do get to see my shirt designs all over campus and that’s pretty cool.”

 

Gudgel says one of the challenges he enjoys is coming up with the different T-shirt designs. “Whenever I make a shirt, I try to make something I actually want to wear,” Gudgel said. “So it's cool seeing people basically wear those shirts around. I guess it's a little bit more confirmation that I did my job right.”

Shawn Jansen is the MUHSD Program Manager Digital Media. He can be reached at Sjansen@muhsd.org.