Spent a couple of hours today with Y10 off timetable doing group work run by Young Enterprise. It was great to see kids really engaged and participating in all the activities. I was most impressed with how well the kids work problem solving in teams. If I compare it to my experience of team work at school, which was academically better than my current school, I would say that this generation are definately better at working together collaboratively.
Of course such a judgement is very subjective, but we actually did a Young Enterprise scheme at my secondary school. We actually had to make a business over a period of a few months and make money over the weeks leading up to Christmas – more like what our Y9 s do now with Mini Enterprise. My memories are first of no one wanting to lead; then no one wanting to follow either, negative comments were the norm. Whilst today I saw people calmly brainstorming and disscussing in a very mature way.
In the assembly at the end, more than one of the business people who volunteer to make these Young Enterprise days possible, said that today had been the best day that they had ever had in schools doing this project. If you ever get to see the film I made last year (sorry not online, DVD only) of this same group doing their Y9 Mini Enterprise last year you would see why.
