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Educators schooled in entrepreneurship
10:49 a.m., Aug. 8, 2006--“With almost any enterprise you try to get off the ground, you're going to run into difficulties, but it's amazing what perseverance can do,” Dave Jones, director of the soon-to-open Pencader Charter School in New Castle, told 24 seasoned educators enrolled in UD's Master of Arts in Economic Education and Entrepreneurship Program (MAEEEP). The guest speaker on Aug. 4, the final day of the six-week summer program, Jones gave the final lesson in real-world entrepreneurship to students from as far away as China before wishing them well in their own entrepreneurial ventures back home. “You have to talk to people, build your center of influence and find out how you can get funds for your enterprise at all costs,” Jones, who once attended the program himself, said, explaining the challenges he ran into when establishing the Pencader Charter School. “If you hear the word 'No,' it never means 'No.' It just means you've got to find another way to make it 'Yes.'” Offered at UD since 1981 and directed by James O'Neill, UD professor of economics, the two-year MAEEEP coursework, which is designed for social studies specialists and general kindergarten-through-grade-12 educators, draws committed teachers from around the world to UD each summer for six weeks. The most recent group of participants, who will graduate next spring, after integrating the lessons they've learned into their own classrooms, includes educators from China, Japan, Canada and the United States. “This is the only existing program in the country that offers teachers this sort of training,” O'Neill said, “and I think that's why it attracts so many international students. Its purpose is not just to give teachers strategies to try out when they return to their classrooms, but to train them to be catalysts for change in improving the quality of economic education, as well.” O'Neill added that while the program's primary goal is to give elementary and secondary school educators the tools they need to implement economics programs into their curricula, a secondary goal is to teach participants lessons about local economies, as students typically come from at least three different countries--often ones with rapidly shifting business landscapes.
Wendy Wang, an eighth- through 12th-grade English teacher at the Beijing Foreign Affairs School in China, said that she was motivated to attend the program because of the innovation she admired in American classrooms. “The standard of elementary and secondary education in China is far below that of the United States,” she said. “The first time I learned about this program, I felt I had to try it in order to bring something new back to my own classroom. The creativity and energy present in American classrooms are elements I want to introduce. I also like the concept of teamwork and want to introduce group projects to my classroom in China.” Glen Matthews, a seventh- and eighth-grade history and geography teacher at the Parkview Center School in Plymouth, Minn., said that one of the best aspects of the program for him is its focus on boosting the caliber of economic education in elementary and secondary school curricula. “I have a passion for teaching economics,” he said, “and I knew someone who'd come through this program who had really been inspired to try new things in the classroom. “All of us here are committed to improving how we teach, and we're soldiers as well. Our goal is to take what we've learned back to our schools and share it with others. “In terms of economic education, we want kids to be aware of why they are in the economic situations they are in, and we want to teach them how they can stay ahead of, rather than behind, the curve. This class helps with that goal,” Matthews said. Article by Becca Hutchinson
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