Teaching Entrepreneurship
Reading the posts on KBW always refreshes me, for all the times that I have read egm,
aco , kenyanmusings, mwariwadavid and many many others, I am proud to be associated. Join my foray into social innovation, entrepreneurship, development projects and travel.
Can one really teach entrepreneurship? The idea that the skills to start up and successfully run your own business are at hand within a teaching module begs every one to consider the possibility for testing the effectiveness of teaching these skills. In a normal class, every person learns and receives the same curriculum, then each takes the same administered test and then after that, the proficiency in the testing serves as a measure of how well you have assimilated the course material.
However, the truth is that standardized assessment tests are woefully bad at determining learning because many of them rely on the ability to reproduce the course material for the examiner and they rely wholly on rote memorization to achieve this level of knowledge. I am not discounting the fact that there are people, who learn from a certain course and retain that knowledge through analysis and application of the material, but it does prompt me to wonder, can we teach entrepreneurship skills be taught to non-traditional learners without this emphasis on standardized testing.
In the United States, the National Foundation For Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) is the premier youth teacher in the field of entrepreneurship. The Foundation believes that young people can learn the skills needed to change their own financial futures at any age. I have a feeling that this particular area of business skills can be taught to young women especially because learning a trade, such as hairdressing is only as successful as your management.
Ryan P. Allis, a young entrepreneurship teacher said:
“Only by teaching does one really learn the material. Through teaching entrepreneurship I added quite a bit to my knowledge about entrepreneurship and business. I learned about Porter’s Five Forces, additional types of alternative financing, new distribution models, the marketing wheel, and a new type of break-even analysis.
Just as important, however, was my learning about people and leadership. I learned how to relate and connect to younger teenagers. I learned how to handle a position of authority. I learned how to write a forty-five minute speech in two hours. I learned teaching styles. I learned that if you know what you are talking about and can gain someone’s trust, he or she will follow you. I learned how to inspire and motivate. I learned how to understand motives and read the body language and tone of a person. I learned how to build rapport and relationships. And I learned how to go ten days with forty hours of sleep.”
I need to learn how to teach entrepreneurship and business skills.
Have an enterprising Friday
An Immigrant, A Learner :Working and Learning Afresh
When I look at my friends volunteer activities, I am amazed at how many are involved in teaching part time here in Philadelphia at both the regular age and adult education classes. Regular classes in the school district of Philadelphia do not cater for adult learners and certainly not those with minimal education. Working with speakers of every language represented in these areas, they work behind the scenes in a great concert of the young and the older learners, with the former teaching the latter in reverse of time tested tradition.
Who will write about these unsung heroes, both students and teachers? For the college student-teacher, life has become so much more than assignments and exams, and assumed a mature air in the company of their elders. For their attentive classes, this is a rest stop that further shows how far they are from countries like Liberia and Honduras. Often, many of these people have fled political strife, and uprooted stable families and generations of memories. For the college kids, they are only beginning the pages of their lives, and some have not yet closed the two decade chapter.
I salute this group, this crew of people learning from each other. I wonder who will really care after their work is done and they have packed up the project for the semester. I realsie that the best things in life are free. I often wondered what I could possibly do if Kenya was torn apart by civil war as many other neighbors, independence peers have done. Would I go to the United Nations High Commisioner For Refugees and plead my status to come to America. Would I get a Refugee registration card and attain rare passage to America? Would my case come up in New York or some other city. And even if I were legit and allowed to stay, would I arrive in a hotel or motel and stay over with my family or would I have to land wherever I may?
I would wonder whether my degree earned at the U.Nairobi or Kenyatta U. would get me a job even though I left my degree documents at home in flames. I would like an opportunity to prove my competence and quickly realise that the rules are different if your first language is not English and your degree is in a different language. That is where the top end of the people in the adult class for English lie. The vast majority are not very well educated and would probably never reach attainment. For them, the goal is to be able to read street signs and bills and of course, news of home.
I think of the class now, where my buddy Ms. K taught last year, and where there is such a long waiting line for the English class. As I move into next week and the next, i shall be encouraged by the hopefulness of their stories, and the passion in their eyes. And still I will be proud and rise to applaud the effort, always hoping for a result to be proud of.
Soulfege: A Fusion Experience
Sweetmother ,
I never forget you
the way you suffer, suffer,
she kept me humble in the concrete jungle…
She taught me to aim high…
Never enuf time to thank her for what she did…
Sweetmother by Soulfege( Abridged lyrics)The reggae/funk/hiphop group Soulfege has arrived. Where the fusion of different genres and influences heralds the entry of an interesting band, Soulfege upps this and has indeed checked in. I am swaying to ‘Sweet mama’, an ode to our mothers, ‘Sweetheart’, a ballad I am now convinced was crooned for beauties everywhere, and ‘Baby’.
When I mention highlife, Africa, fusion, soul and heart, if you are still in the dark, know that I am on about Soulfege. Kudos to this group, which is one of the best groups to have emerged in the recent years. Some of you know that I am on a roll with proteges to emerge from Kuumba ( Harvard Choir ) such as Shu and now Daniel N. Ashong, of Soulfege. It does not hurt that the group is a diaspora group with influences from all over including the Fugees, highlife and the best of that benga-esque beat that I cannot seem to get enough of.
I think listening to this group tonight was a real treat and am very sad that we missed them narrowly when they came to perform in Philly over the summer. Reading DNA’s story about discovering his roots after travelling the world is one that many friends and I can identify with, what with some having come from upbringing in at least five world capitals and a fair number of the rest transplanted to the US to study and carve careers. I admire his talent, his and Soulfege’s passion for Africa and the development of youth in Africa.
Not one to leave an idea in song alone, the group has embraced development in Africa within the Sweetmother.org platform to host a Youth Conference this past April 2006 and are now the energy behind the Sweetmother Tour, which will use the arts as a powerful tool to develop the arts in Africa. The group hopes to show undiscovered bands in an alternative, positive view of Africa and win the hearts of music fans globally too. Who knows, I could catch up with them in Nairobi.
Soulfege, the diaspora applauds you!
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