Teaching Day 1

About to spend my first sleep here in Irkutsk, on a couch in a 2 bedroom dorm. Our accommodations are pretty good - I was pleasantly surprised. We have a little kitchen, a room with a bathtub, a little toilet room, and 2 bedrooms, each with a bed and a couch. We are right on the campus of Baikal National University of Economics and Law (corner of Goirken and Lenin street), so it is quite convenient to get to classes. Pictures of exterior below!

[In front of our flat]

[view of the university from our flat]

[Open manhole ourside our flat]

I got in today at around 11:30 and it was go, go, go from there. Our awesome site contact, Kate, met me at the airport with one of those signs that you see in movies and always wish some one had for you..."LEADER Project 2010". Came straight to campus to catch up with the rest of the crew (Yves, Yussef and Susan) and then we went to the campus canteen where they provided us with a great three course meal. Went straight to teaching after that. Yussef and I are teaching a 3rd year class in Russian, so we are teaching through a translator. We had an awesome class today - the students were so energetic and engaged! They all wanted to contribute to the lesson, which made it a lot easier for us to facilitate discussion.

Each day's format is pretty consistent - first we do a case, then we let the students work on a business plan, and finally we have a lecture style class that is used for background of the next day's case. Class starts at 2:00, and runs until around 5:30. The case we covered today was how the owner of Lululemon, Chip Wilson, decided to grow his business. Then we talked about what it means to be an entrepreneur, why someone would want to be an entrepreneur, and what makes an entrepreneur successful. After that, we split the students into groups -- they will each be working together in their groups to come up with a new business venture and develop a solid business plan. They will present their proposal to the class on the last day of the LEADER program, where they will pitch their business to us as if we were investors. The business plan lesson was on idea generation, and how to successfully brainstorm ideas. Finally, we delivered a lecture on opportunity recognition, which will be the basis of tomorrow's case.
I am super tired today and can't wait to teach again tomorrow!

Below are some pictures of me teaching - the woman beside me is one of our translators.  :)