Week 1 reflection

When we found out that we would have to change our curriculum into Arabic, we worried that it would pose a challenge for us to translate all of the concepts properly. Our curriculum is combination of Babson material and some original Al-Tareeq concepts and activities, so we were not sure how students would respond them, but we’re finding ways to keep them focused and active. However, we’re four classes in and the students continue to surprise us—it is going to be extremely hard to leave them.

Day by day, their engagement increases as they learn to solve problems by being critical thinkers and taking matters into their own hands. For the past two days, we’ve had students think about problems in their local community in groups of two. Some of the community problems they identified were lack of motivation in the local work force and inadequate facilities for students to engage in sports. We asked them to then come up with three potential solutions to the problems they’d identified and highlight the skills they thought they needed in order to start solving their problems.  Their solutions were both well thought out and possible to achieve. Once this process was done, each student pitched their idea in front of the class and received feedback from fellow students. We did have to probe the students to give each other constructive criticism, but after the first few pitches students provided each other with valuable feedback. This has helped them become more comfortable around each other and consequently, has led to an increase in participation from some of the quieter students in the class.

During each class we’ve made an effort to introduce new English vocabulary words that are common in the business world. Today, to take a break from conceptual learning, we decided to change things up a little bit. Students had twenty minutes at the start of class to look around the center and find something that they thought needed fixing. Then, with monopoly money, they were asked to “buy” a certain amount of resources that they felt could address the problem. Then they spent the rest of the class designing a product or service that they believed would address the problem. This activity brought our first week to a close in hope that students apply the concepts that we’ve taught throughout the week.

Next week we’ll start to challenge the students to get into teams and start to formulate basic business plans for the problems that they highlighted within their community. We’ve already worked with students on the business model canvas and believe that basic business plans are not out of their reach. We ourselves are learning just as much from these students as they are learning from us. It has been a great experience so far, and we’re already looking forward to next year.