How to increase student agency through entrepreneur project?

Introduction

In order to increase student agency and foster community, I started an entrepreneur project at my new school, ESF Discovery College, with MYP Year 1 – Year 5 students. This blog post describes my experience with the project. Giving students the chance to direct their own learning is essential in my opinion as a teacher. In light of this, I manage to persuade a group of teachers and my leaders to collaborate with me on an entrepreneur project during our Agency in Action class block. Giving our students the chance to develop original ideas for a business and take charge of their learning was the aim.

Although we have one semester to help students learn about entrepreneurship and develop their business, in reality we have around 12 hours because each class lasts 40 minutes, and there are a total of 17 lessons. I always take into account the number of hours available when planning a unit of work or an event. Intentionality should be taken into account, and lessons should be planned accordingly and cohesively. A recommendation is that consider the time you have available with students if you are interested in undertaking this with your students. Additionally, allocating time for teachers to discuss, plan, and seek feedback is also essential.

Rationale

My school provides classes titled Agency in Action in an effort to inspire students to take charge of their education. The program seeks to provide students a chance to explore their passions, build up executive function skills, and discover how to set goals and develop action plans to achieve their goals. I thought this to be inspiring as a new teacher at the school this academic year. There may not always be enough place in the school curriculum for independent inquiry project. This is a fantastic chance to promote independence.

I begin to wonder how we could give students the opportunity to engage in self-directed learning in Agency in Action lessons. I had previously implemented an IDEAS project at KIS International School which was a success and received positive feedback. Unfortunately, due to COVID, I did not have the chance to implement it again and refine the project. In light of this, I would like to test out the idea in a different school context and see if we can set similar learning conditions to encourage agency and increase student confidence. It was also prompted by the fact that students, teachers, and parents seem to have misconceptions about what agency is and is not. So, I also wanted to clarify these misconceptions. Furthermore, after being affected by Covid and protests in Hong Kong, we need a variety of whole school events to restore school community spirit.

Clarify What Agency Is and Isn’t

To begin the entrepreneur project, the first step was to clarify what agency is and isn’t with teachers. Before our first meeting, I invited participating teachers to brainstorm what agency is and isn’t via Jamboard. This is to ensure we all have a shared understanding of student agency and how we define it. Having some common understanding of agency, we were able to move forward with our project and guide our students. In my blog post, “Debunk Myths of Student Agency“, I explored what student agency is and isn’t, and how teachers could create environments that foster student agency.

I also shared key points of the OECD Student Agency for 2030 following the discussion. I found the OECD Student Agency for 2030 to be a great framework for our project. Using the framework, I developed a plan to assist our teachers in guiding students toward success.

Agency refers to the capacity of students to assume control of their own learning by establishing goals, making decisions, and assessing their progress. Students who exhibit agency collaborate with their teachers or supportive individuals, demonstrate initiative, express curiosity, and hold themselves accountable for effecting changes in their learning setting. They are aware of their personal learning goals and take actions to accomplish them. The teacher’s responsibility is to offer guidance and direction within a well-organized framework while granting students the autonomy to make their own decisions.

Benefits of Entrepreneur Projects

Students greatly benefit from engaging in an entrepreneur project, including practicing various approaches to learning skills, enhancing financial literacy, and developing perseverance and resilience.

First, students are exposed to real-world challenges when developing entrepreneur projects in teams. They learn how to negotiate ideas with one another and adopt practical and innovative problem-solving approaches. In order to develop a successful and innovative venture, students need to exercise their critical and creative thinking skills, and become adept at decision-making. They conduct market research, make the elevator pitch presentation, practice marketing strategies, and learn how to interact with customers. This deepens their understanding of business dynamics.

Secondly, entrepreneur projects offer an excellent opportunity for students to develop financial literacy. By managing their expenses, pricing their products, considering their time and minimum wage, and calculating projected profits, students gain experience in financial planning and resource allocation. This knowledge equips students with valuable insights into personal finance and enhances their ability to make informed financial decisions in the future.

In addition, dealing with obstacles, setbacks, and failures are part of starting a business. Through such experiences, students can develop perseverance and resilient while dealing with challenges. Students learn how to adjust to changing circumstances by overcoming challenges with guidance. I do hope, in the future, students can approach projects in a confident, tenacious, and willing manner.

Finally, entrepreneur projects also provide opportunities for interdisciplinary learning. Students can synthesize knowledge and understanding from several disciplines when develop their business. It naturally aids students in seeing connections between disciplines and ties them to situations encountered in the real world.

How Did We Implement Entrepreneur Projects?

I won’t lie. Implementing the entrepreneur projects with more than 500 students was intimidating and challenging. The process had been complicated and complex, and I had to deal with increasing amounts of red tape. I questioned why I believed it would be a good idea to start an initiative after moving to a new school! However, I was nearly halfway through the project and I knew students were beginning to grasp the concept of the entrepreneur project and were becoming enthusiastic about the prospect of showcasing their businesses on the expo day. I also need to model perseverance and demonstrate tenacity. I keep telling myself, “Rules are made to be broken.” Thankfully, I have supportive leaders who troubleshoot problems with me and a group of teachers and support staff who see my vision and provide assistance.

Here are the steps we took to implement the MYP Entrepreneur Project:

Align The Project With The School’s Vision And Value

It’s imperative to ensure the entrepreneur project initiative is in alignment with the mission and guiding principles of the school before getting started. This will guarantee that the project is in accordance with the school vision and supports the creation of a conducive learning environment. It’s imperative to ensure the entrepreneur project initiative is in alignment with the mission and guiding principles of the school before getting started. This will guarantee that the project is in accordance with the school vision and supports the creation of a conducive learning environment. Students at my school are expected to demonstrate the 5 DC learning outcomes: be agentic; be international-minded; flourish; take principled action; achieve highly. As part of this project, I created guiding questions for each learning outcome as well as identified different learning behaviors.

Provide Clear Guidelines

Not every teacher is comfortable guiding students to developing entrepreneur projects. To ensure the success of this project, teachers needed clear directions and constant communication about next steps. This entails creating lesson plans and procedures for them to follow as well as assisting students in developing their business ideas. The guidelines for what business ideas are permitted and what isn’t allowed under Hong Kong government rules must also be clearly communicated. Moreover, students may not know what they can develop as a business idea with a limited budget at first. Some examples of businesses that require little or no budget would be helpful. See some examples below.

The following lesson outline is an example of how I developed lessons to support students and teachers. I created these lessons following the design thinking process.

Use A Project Management Tool

It’s daunting to manage more than 100 projects involving 512 students and 20 teachers. It will be very important to have an effective project management tool. When there are so many moving parts, it is easy to lose track of student progress updates, deadlines, and important communication. Personally, I found Trello is an effective tool for me to manage projects. It also allows me to monitor student progress and collect student work samples. We weren’t able to use this tool as effectively as I would have liked this year due to a lack of familiarity among teachers and students. It would be ideal if supervisors could also use Trello to record feedback to students.

Identify Supporting Charities With Students

Invite students to identify charities to support was my secondary school principal’s idea. I thought it was a great idea. Students ambassadors discussed the ideas with year level deans. As soon as we identified the charities, our financial department checked their registration status with the government. At the end, we had three charities to support: Mother’s Choice, Hong Kong Dog Rescue, and The Women’s Foundation. Unfortunately, we cannot support small organizations or individuals that are not recognized by the Hong Kong government.

Through identifying charities they would like to support, students were encouraged to think about social responsibility and how their business can impact the world beyond the classroom.

Organize An Entrepreneur Expo

An essential component of the Entrepreneur initiative is planning the Entrepreneur Expo. Students have the chance to showcase their creations and share their ideas with the larger school community during the Expo. Through interacting with consumers and promoting their business, they develop confidence. They establish links between what they learn in school and what they really do. Students get the opportunity to market their goods to their fellow students, teachers, and parents during the Expo. They pick some tips on how to spruce up their businesses and interact with clients. They might get inspiration by stopping by several booths to learn how other students have developed their company concepts. Last but not least, they may check the actual profit and expected profit depending on their sales to find out more about pricing tactics.

Based on my experience, it will be useful to make the vendor map and distribute it to teachers, parents, and students in advance. The vendor maps can create excitement around the entrepreneur expo event and let people know what businesses will be participating. The vendor map should also contain any additional instructions, such as the expo schedule or any guidelines that student vendors must adhere to.

Use A Ticket System 

We decided to use a ticket system to reduce the risk of students losing money and simplify transactions during the Entrepreneur Expo. Customers were encouraged to pre-purchase the tickets prior to the Expo day and they used these tickets to make purchases from our participating student vendors. This system helped students avoid handling cash and protected them against money loss. Since it’s a fundraising event for charities, any tickets left after the Expo were not refundable. We also made 50 HKD as a minimum purchase. We purchased these tickets from Amazon and sell them for 5 HKD each.

Conclusion

The right planning and scaffolding of entrepreneur projects increases student agency and promotes critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Setting high expectations and having clear guidelines are essential. I celebrated the learning of our students. Initially, most students began with the idea of selling soda, chips, and candies. A group of students want to bring a baby goat to school for an animal feeding business. Our supervisors guided students in re-identifying potential business ideas and developing them. During the Expo, we had a variety of interesting student vendors participating. These included booths offering delicious bakery goods, 3D-printed keychains, postcards, edible jewelry, T-shirts, carnival games, face painting, an escape room, a second hand bookstore and more! Our community has raised more than 50,000 Hong Kong dollars! In August, we will contact the charities to make the donation.

Agency is not about letting students do whatever they want. We are abandoning our students if that’s the case! A teacher’s role should be to provide structures, guidance, and feedback so that students can realize what excellence is and set appropriate learning goals. Also, school leaders should allocate time, create a system for teachers to collaborate, offer suggestions for improving the program, and acknowledge teachers’ efforts.

References

• Oecd.org. “Student Agency – Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development,” 2023. https://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/teaching-and-learning/learning/student-agency/.

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