Crash Course

I might have mentioned it before but I started teaching a business class at the middle school. It's supposed to be 15 hours (chosen by the school supervisor) over 7 classes (chosen by me)and in French (which is a million times better than Wolof which I would be unable to say anything). We're studying business basics: what makes a good business, budgeting, profit, markets, marketing, accounting, and VERY VERY basic econ (which I'm now thinking we won't have time to get to). The first meeting was last Wednesday but all we did was talk briefly about the topic of the course and very, very abstractly about what makes a good business. Everyone's "thought homework" (I told them I wasn't going to give them real homework, just things to think about) was to think of something that's missing in Bambey.

Today was our second meeting and I had a pretty simple plan: a brief intro and my expectations, what makes a good business, how to find YOUR idea, how to choose/analyze your idea, group work (they're working in groups to apply the daily lessons and "create" a business). In theory the teaching (mostly discussion based) was going to take an hour and a half and the group work 30 minutes.

That didn't happen for several reasons... but let's start at the beginning:
My expectations: I simply explained that, even though Senegalese teachers will tell them exactly what to write down (usually they write it on the board and the students copy it exactly), I was going to teach like an American. Aka, they would have to decide that was important to write down. (We'll come back to how well this worked in a second).

The three "subjects" went alright until I would ask for students' ideas ("what's something missing in Bambey?" "why should your business idea be based on something you like to do?") and it was like pulling teeth. About 15 questions in, they figured out that I wasn't going to make fun of them or yell at them for any answer and that I also wasn't going to move on until I got answers (I started saying "we're not moving on until I have 5 answers,"). We also had problems when I would ask students to summarize or tell me the important parts of what I had taught. After the first try at that (in response to "what makes a good business") they started kind of taking notes and I had a few students be able to volunteer for the next section.

Unfortunately that only took an hour total. I had an hour left to do the group work and I was SURE that they would finish it in 10 minutes (I remember anytime anyone said to me, "you're done and can leave after this" I rushed through everything). The way I set it up was that there would be 5 groups and each group had a notebook I had bought. I was going to create "worksheets" for each lesson so today's they had to write 3 things they each liked to do, 3 things they were each good at, and 3 business ideas (I told them they could be not feasible). Then they would choose 3 for the group and do a SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analysis for each of those 3 and settle on one. Luckily that took them an hour! (So I was right on time).

I collected the notebooks so I could read them and judge what was learned and what needs to be reviewed. I learned that I need to review the concept of not copying another business (no, I'm not letting any of my students open the 100th cyber cafe or the 15 pharmacy in town). And I didn't do a good enough job of explaining that your likes/what you're good at should lead into your business ideas. For instance, one of my students loves dance and is good at dance and wants to open a hair salon.

I know the kids are kind of frustrated with my French but I went from having 15 students the first day to 27 today. I'd love to keep all 27 (including the high schooler who's coming to the middle school for the class) but I'll be happy if I keep 20. But, (sort of) to my credit I think they're all at least interested even if it is only because I'm a foreigner.

Who knows! We don't have class next week because there's a field trip but the next class (in two weeks) is budgeting, profit, and accounting (because I had to combine two classes... I might end up just getting rid of econ and pushing everything back a week once I start lesson planning).

Sorry that was kind of long but I'm excited to be actually doing (or trying to do) business development work!

KO