Entrepreneurial Teaching

In my last job, I spent a lot of time around venture capitalists.  They often judged our business plan competitions and mentored students.  A frequent question they asked the budding entrepreneurs was be something like, ‘does you plan allow for taking your business to scale?’  In other words, are you constructing a business plan that works only in a bubble or will you be able to expand and grow it?  The merits of ‘bigger is better’ aside, all entrepreneurs want to see their business grow in some regard.  Maybe growth means serving 200 customers a day as opposed to 150 or expanding from just coffee to pastries and coffee, but some form of scaling takes place in every small business.

I feel like this entrepreneurial urge sometimes conflicts with the ultra-serial nature of some entrepreneurs and some teachers.  That spirit pushes us to create, create, create, sometimes at the expense of scaling existing lessons.  I know, for me, that is something I really want to work on.  After all, a good lesson is something that should impact the class not just on that day, but for the rest of the semester … and I do not just mean in coincidental ways, but in planned, measured activities.  Can we take a good lesson and have it affect the entire semester supporting deeper comprehension and fostering critical thought?  I almost would say that, in fact, you cannot achieve deeper comprehension and critical thought without this type of scaled lesson planning.  Looking back on some of my lessons from last year and I definitely missed some great opportunities to ‘scale’ a lesson.  By not considering ‘scaling’ these lessons I effectively kept them in a bubble and my students missed out.

Obviously, this is not something applicable for every lesson.  As I allude to above, I am not espousing something that I am some master at, by any means, but I do strive to reflect this principle.  If I look at my US History curriculum and think of it like a house, most objectives serve as the bricks of the house allowing me to build up, or scale, it into the finest little abode on the street (or so I wish to believe).  Other objectives are like the furniture of the house.  Yes, they are tangential and part of its essence, but the pieces do not necessary build off one another.  In the end, I think we want to make sure that we have a house with furniture as opposed to some furniture with some bricks.

The difference between good and bad teachers comes down to one thing: entrepreneurship.  Well, more precisely, I would say that good teachers must be entrepreneurial.  This is a strange juxtaposition for many educators, but the myriad parallels between the two occupations are staggering.  Many of the same characteristics that make a good entrepreneur make a good teacher: being resilient, adding value, seeking opportunity, planning ahead, adapting to change, and understanding one’s client.

Before returning to the classroom in 2008, I worked for The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE).  While working at NFTE, I consulted with over 30 teachers from the poorest school districts in the Washington, DC region.  As I visited different classrooms, I unconsciously collected a wide body of evidence as to what makes a good teacher.  Early on, I noticed a trend among the stronger teachers: many teachers were actually entrepreneurs – and not just those that teach Entrepreneurship.  The teachers I met owned everything from a small IT business to a small chain of barber shops.  Others simply did photography or tutoring, but they all saw themselves as entrepreneurs.  This surprised me at first and I chalked up the trend to the most obvious factors: summers off and low pay (not to mention the fact that by pitching an entrepreneurship curriculum I was bound to run into a few entrepreneurs).  As I spent increasing time with these educators, however, I learned one thing: these people were entrepreneurs because it is what they were good at, not just in the business world but in the classroom.

As I tried to make sense of this correlated evidence, I began to realize that it wasn’t important whether or not a teacher owned a business, but whether or not that teacher was entrepreneurial.  In fact, for many teachers their classroom was their business.  They saw their curriculum like entrepreneurs see business plans and their students like entrepreneurs see customers.  Some entrepreneurial ideas that good teachers are already thinking about: How is my lesson adding value?  How do the objectives fit into my future plans?  Can I review the plan and adapt to unforeseen change?  Does my plan take into account the student perspective?  What opportunities exist to extend this plan in the future?

In many ways, teachers are the ultimate ‘serial entrepreneurs’ because they are doing this every day.  And just like small businesses fail, so do teachers’ lesson plans.  In fact, sometimes they fail miserably.  Good teachers are inherently resilient to this failure, because this process must take place all over again … tomorrow.

All teachers should be trained to think entrepreneurially.  While traditional wisdom says entrepreneurship cannot be taught, I object to that notion.  I prefer to think the entrepreneurial faculty exists in us all.  While some are born with the entrepreneurial mindset ‘turned on’, others are born with the switch ‘turned off’ and it takes someone to come along and flip the switch.  This is why all school administrators should not only look to hire entrepreneurial teachers, but also should be working to ‘flip’ on the entrepreneurial mindset of their current faculty.  In fact, if being entrepreneurial means all of the great behaviors above, would any existing professional development be better than imparting the entrepreneurial mindset on teachers?  If educators begin thinking about curriculum and lesson plans like entrepreneurs think about business plans it will only enhance the student experience and improve the American educational experience.

This blog will be about my teaching experiences and interests.  Most content, however, will center around this idea of entrepreneurial teaching.  It’s not something I do perfectly (or even close to it), but it is an idea that I think could inspire teachers in a positive way.