Monday 30 May 2016

First Day of Class

We’ve touched down in Amman and commenced our first Al-Tareeq entrepreneurship and emotional intelligence program. The first day brought with it a plethora of emotion, as we weren’t sure what to expect in terms of engagement and attendance from the students. The class itself is taking place in Zarqa, forty minutes outside of Amman. We arrived to a room filled with 21 eager students, 14 girls and 7 boys. At the last minute, we decided to translate the curriculum into Arabic to ensure our lessons resonate with the students.

For the first hour we began with two engaging and active icebreakers to help the students feel more comfortable around us and allow us to get to know them. Once we got down to business, we were taken aback by how the students responded to our material. They participated constantly, asking questions, working together, and showing more and more confidence as they presented ideas to their classmates. One 17 year-old student even speaks Arabic, English, Japanese and is learning Chinese- how incredible!

After our icebreakers, we introduced some new concepts in both English and Arabic and showed the students a case study on a local problem. We asked them to form teams, identify the problem, brainstorm solutions, and then complete a basic business model canvas sheet. While at first we were hesitant to ask so much of them, the students surprised us with their passion and dedication to the project. Their solutions were innovative and original, and we were beyond impressed.
What our case study served to show is that nobody is born with an entrepreneurial spirit; rather it is a mindset they can learn. It is a specific set of behavioral tendencies that set entrepreneurs apart from others, and our students started to realize that they themselves could have an impact on their community through entrepreneurship. We want them to understand that not every business needs to be venture capital-backed and that entrepreneurship takes place in all levels of business, no matter how small.


Our first class was an overview of the entire course—the next 9 days will be a more in-detail study of all the concepts we introduced on day one. Day two will cover problem-solving skills and introduce idea generation. Check back tomorrow to learn more about our students!