Social Entrepreneurship in an Elementary School in India

I read Thomas Friedman's motivating column today and then found that one of my colleagues, Darah Bonham, was blogging about entrepreneurship in schools and calling on readers to inspire entrepreneurship in schools.

It got me thinking about our work with expeditionary learning. Implementation of expeditionary learning takes a long time, five to seven years is what most experts say. We are in year one. Yet, we are slowly but surely starting to find that one of the things that expeditionary learning will help us design is units of study that help students make real world connections. The work and slow because it is uphill. Not necessarily with the staff but any work to make things more authentic in a public school is an uphill slog (see NCLB). I have found that continual inspiration for me and others is crucial to help us keep that momentum uphill.

Then I found this wonderful video on TED.



One could argue after viewing that the Riverside School is an expeditionary learning school without calling themselves that. They have a simple motto: I Can and as a result they have created a group of young social entrepreneurs in their school and country. We always find reasons to not do things, bad budgets, stubborn people, but we need to focus more on the spirit of "I can".