Today was essentially a long ceremony. Two learner groups from each school participated in a business plan competition, and presented powerpoints to the entire assembled group. Bloekombos was not represented because of the short program (just this week), which I know was disappointing to them and I felt really terribly. But the groups from Hector Peterson who presented did really well, I am terribly proud of them! It really warmed my heart to see the progress of all the learners in just the short amount of time that we spent, and I believe and hope that many of them took some good learning out of this. How many will start their own business, I am not sure, but I think they all gained some good skills and confidence. Hopefully they had as good an experience as I did!
Sne told me that some of the learners asked him if I was a professional teacher which surprised the heck out of me, but I’ll take it as a compliment. I was definitely forced out of my comfort zone this week by having to lecture so much but I think it was a good learning experience for me as well.
Afterwards I signed the certificates for the Bloekombos learners, and we all took pictures and had some sad goodbyes. I do wish we were staying even a few days longer, I had such a good time here in this lovely city. Our hosts were wonderful and gracious, working with the learners was an amazing experience I will always take with me, I’m very glad to have met some new friends and aside from the first week even the weather was amazing. I will admit to having a good time scaring the locals by telling them how cold the winters are in Boston – some of the Hector Peterson learners said they wanted to come visit me in the U.S. some day which would be totally amazing, but I advised them not to come in the winter because they would not enjoy it.
We rushed out of the apartment and traveled to Cape Town airport where we caught a flight to Johannesburg, and we’re staying at some crazy modern hotel. The lights in our shower are green, but hey, at least we have a shower!
We had a little bit of a late start this morning, and after a quick marketing exercise where groups of learners practiced designing and marketing a new type of candy bar, Sne and I worked with the learners in groups to go over their business plans. Many of them had filled out quite a bit of the business plan as homework (which was not required, mind you). There was still some confusion about the difference between startup costs and COGS, but overall more learners understood, and faster, than had been my experience last week. So I think going over the COGS vs. vs. fixed costs vs. startup costs over and over and over did help – in fact one group of girls got it exactly right on the first try, with no help from me.
So the business plans we had in our class were two hair salons, a car wash, selling paraffin, selling eggs, selling decorative glasses, and a fruit and vegetable stand. Some nice variety, and I really think a lot of these are achievable businesses for the learners, so maybe some will actually follow through and start up their business.
After a handful of Castles and soundly losing a bet, we went to a braai at Tshepo’s house for all the Babson and Stellenbosch volunteers. All in all, a most enjoyable final evening in Stellenbosch!
I must start off with a correction – shark diving was NOT in the Eastern Cape. But it was east of Cape Town and Stellenbosch.
Today was another good day with the learners – we started off with an income statement and I had the craziest flashback of Professor Parrino teaching us similar things about a year ago. Suffice to say finance is not my strong suit! For an exercise I had the learners do an income statement for the t-shirt business we did yesterday. One group did quite well and wound up with the correct gross and net profit, although they confused some COGS items with other operating income. Overall quite good though.
After finishing up with the finance we moved on to marketing – I did the marketing overview, Sne taught about advertising, and then I taught about market research. The trading game was quite a hit, the learners really had a good time!
In the afternoon after lunch we went through an exercise of dissecting the business plan of one of the learners as a class (her business was to sell eggs in the community). We started with the four Ps of marketing, and talked a little bit about her strategy (would it be less for less, more for more, or more for the same). I feel like I’m teaching much better this second week – going away from the curriculum more and bringing in some elements that I learned at Babson. As part of the exercise we went through the costing of one unit for a third time, in detail. I will say that I think it is finally sinking in, and some of the boys who are clearly the kids who are “too cool for school” and were joking around a lot the first couple of days were paying rapt attention for a lot of today, which I think is a good sign.
I think some of the kids are finally starting to understand the math behind the business which was probably my main objective for teaching this week. One student, Xolani (and I’m pleased to report that I learned the way to pronounce X in Xhosa, or at least something approximating the way to say X in Xhosa) said after class that he “finally got it.” Today he was a little shaky but now he understands, and they do not teach this in their schools. When they teach things like the income statement it is not in the context of a business, so the learners do not understand. I was so gratified to hear this because I think some of the other learners probably feel similarly. It’s an odd situation because I’ve been doing most of the teaching this week and there are 14 learners so I feel like more of a traditional teacher than last week, and as a result I don’t think I have such a close personal relationship with these learners. On the flip side though, I think I have taught them better. On the car ride back I was talking to Deon who is one of the Stellenbosch volunteers and he was saying that is a common tradeoff – be a teacher or have a deeper personal relationship. Ultimately I came here to teach and I think that’s the most important thing but I do kind of miss the bond I had with my learners last week.
Anyway afterwards many of us went out for a braai (aka BBQ) in the woods (some sort of national park or recreation area). Unfortunately the braai took so long getting heated up that most of the food was not cooked by the time it was getting dark, so we finished up back at the Waldenhof apartments where we learned that one member of our group would win any dancing competition he enters – and he definitely entertained us, we had a great time. Before heading back to the apartments though I had a really good time – the weather was warm, the scenery was gorgeous, and we had some interesting conversations. I will report that I think I’m probably the worst student of Afrikaans ever, I can’t remember anything unless it’s written down! Also the wine had this warning label on it that we all found hilarious – it said “Don’t drink and walk on the road, you may be killed.” Driving, apparently is ok, but walking is very dangerous!
In totally and completely unrelated news today is the tenth anniversary of the Ask Jeeves IPO, which I had totally forgotten about. Good times … I feel very nostalgic for my life back then, sometimes. So a shout out to anyone and everyone who worked with me back then – hope the best for all of you in the years to come, and I miss you!!
We arrived at Bloekombos exactly on time (we finally learned to tell the learners to show up at 9am rather than 8:30). We were delayed because I needed to buy bread for the peanut butter & syrup sandwiches. This is the downside to being the only school in session this week, I think some of our logistical needs fall through the cracks. <-- Understatement of the day.
Sadly for the learners who did not care for math we spent pretty much the whole day doing math of various sorts (or maths, even as they call it here –this reminds me more of the UK every day!). But overall we had a very good session with the learners today – we reviewed the main components of a business (what you are selling, how you are going to make the product or perform the service, who you are selling to, how they know about it, strategy (less for less, more for more, the same for less), where to sell from, etc.). Then we moved onto the math, which I did my best to keep interesting. Someone threw out the idea of a hair salon so we listed up all the costs and divided them into startup and operating costs, and into fixed and variable costs. Then we practiced calculating the cost of one unit (in this case a hairstyle), calculated the labor cost, and figured out total revenues and costs for the month assuming 100 customers and 144 working hours. This whole process took about an hour which I think was good because this was the part of the program that really gave the learners the most trouble at the two schools I was at last week.
Lunch eventually showed up around 12:50pm, when we were in the middle of doing an income statement exercise on t-shirt sales. We let the learners go around 1:30pm, but did not get picked up until 2:45; apparently there were some delays in dropping the learners at Stellenbosch off at their schools. After getting back to Stellenbosch, Matilde and I went out to buy materials for the learners for the trading game for tomorrow.
When I got back to the apartments, most people had already left on a bike tour. I went for a run before it got dark, and ran into the bicycle crew on the way. It was gorgeous – winery on the right, open field with some beautiful white horses on the left. I ran up a bit further and turned around, and was smacked in the face by seeing a township (I think Kayamandi) on the hill up ahead. It is just such an incredible contrast to see this rural view that can rival anything I’ve seen in the world in the foreground with a township in the background. The contrast in such a close area is really something to behold, and what really got me thinking was that I had completely forgotten that the township existed. It is so easy when you are in Stellenbosch or Cape Town to forget the dire poverty some people live in, and then you look at it in a situation like this and it is actually beautiful, from a distance. Speaking of beautiful – at one point I turned around on the run home and the mountains were this amazing shade of pink that I had never seen before, like something out of National Geographic. Stunning – just stunning.
For dinner our group went to a restaurant called Cubana where I had a much-needed salad. Too much tasty and exotic meat in this country so I don’t eat enough vegetables. Some of the Stellenbosch volunteers came out with us for another drink after, but this whole process took so long that by the time we were ready to move on it was time to go back to the apartments.
