Teaching is Hard Work!

Hi, I'm Les, A Sauder MBA candidate. I was stationed at the ICC site along with two UBC BCom students, Rob and Candy, and two Strathmore students, Celestine and Emma. My experience in teaching in Nairobi has been fantastic. Coming here, I was expecting to have to work much harder to help our students grasp the concepts in a business plan, but what I have found is bright, receptive, eager and hard working students. While their business acumen needs work, they don't have to stretch far to attach their business ideas to concepts like Market Research, Supply Chain Analysis and Cash Flow forecasting. Their abilities make our days more interactive and productive than I ever imagined.

Having the capability is only half the challenge. Cramming the business knowledge they need into 3 weeks means some long days. It takes a lot of practice on their part and flexibility on our part to keep pace with our jammed curriculum. It also took a number of early morning and late afternoon one-on-one sessions to keep everyone up to speed. This individual attention wouldn't be possible without the teacher-student ratio we are so lucky to have. The one-on-one sessions really helped adapt each individual plan to the model we set out in the curriculum. As we said in class, internationally we may speak different languages, but the language of business is international. Building these business plans to a world-wide standard means that our students will be able to plan effectively and look for the right financing should they want to take their ideas from plan to practice. As student-teachers, we were fortunate enough to have worked on the curriculum ourselves, editing and adding to what had been developed in previous years. This allowed us to really support each other while also being able to effectively deliver specialized tutoring.

I feel like my fellow teachers were incredible resources to our students. Candy's BCom focus was on Marketing and she was instrumental in helping our students refine their marketing plans with top notch surveys and analysis and really amazing branding for each plan. Rob's focus is in Finance and he really knew how to deliver his knowledge effectively to the students in a fun and functional way. The added bonus of having our Strathmore partners was not only a Kenyan context, but incredible Accounting skills.

One of the most exciting pieces of this experience is really how much I feel I have learned from my students. They have opened my eyes to life in Nairobi, taught me new ice breakers and helped me see how much of an opportunity there is in Kenya to bring knowledge and skills to the people who can use it most, but who have not been privileged to have the UBC education I have. Helping to support their efforts to create a stronger Kenya for themselves and their future generations is an experience I will never forget.

--Les Robertson


Les mopping the floor of the ICC classroom, one of the daily "teaching duties."