Local Educators Receive Training on Teaching Entrepreneurship
Category : News
On August 9th, the San Diego Youth Entrepreneurship Program (YEP) hosted a professional development workshop for educators from high schools, community colleges, and other youth-focused organizations. The workshop, facilitated by Dr. Carol Folbre, nationally certified expert in youth entrepreneurship, and Sandra Mittelsteadt, co-author of the Career Academy Toolkit and Sticky Learning, provided the participants with tools and strategies for teaching entrepreneurship skills that are essential for developing students with key skills for academic and workplace success.
Workshop participants were lead through a series of excercises designed for them to explore a problem-solving and project-based approach to teaching entrepreneurship skills. In one of the exercises, participants were assembled into groups of four people, each taking on a different role at various departments within a fictional soft drink company to decide how to best expand its product line. The departments were Corporate Citizenship, Finance, Marketing and Sales, and Production. Participants were provided with a packet of information about the company, its plans to add a new soft drink to its product lineup, and department specific goals. They were asked to have a department meeting with participants of other groups that were in the same role, as well as a company-wide meeting where there was a representative from each department to decide how to best produce, market, and profit from this new soft drink.
Each department head at the company-wide meetings advocated for their department’s specific goals until everyone reached a consensus. The groups then presented their plans for producing and selling the new soft drink. This exercise allowed participants to explore how students can learn to make decisions that take into account conflicting concerns and points of view within an organization.
The workshop also featured a lunch discussion with local young entrepeneurs and YEP participants Frank Golbeck of Golden Coast Mead, and Erika Calvert of Airshine Music. Frank and Erika shared their experience with running a business, talked about the skills they feel have contributed to their success, and discussed how they feel teachers can better prepare the next generation of entrepreneurs.
The traditional method of teaching business concepts relies mostly on lectures and reading materials, which can make it difficult for students to really understand and retain those concepts. The problem-solving and project-based approach taught at this workshop provided these educators with a practical way to teach entrepreneurship concepts so students can understand the content much easier and retain the knowledge much longer through the use of activities that allow the students to experience these concepts first-hand.
To see additional photos from the workshop, click here.