Bean counter

As I have possibly written before, I never imagined becoming a ‘bean counter’ at any point as part of my career plan. As today has been the first day of half-term it has given me an opportunity to get stuck into our long term business plan.

I always enjoyed teaching spreadsheets to the advanced level students when I was an ICT teacher. It was great watching them work through the advanced tutorial and identifying the moment when the penny dropped that, far from being the dullest piece of software on the planet, Microsoft Excel is actually pretty amazing. Unfortunately not many young people make it this far with spreadsheets and still automatically associate Excel with crushing boredom.

Like most people I’ve always learnt new skills most effectively when there has been some point to learning them. Making the course relevant to the students is one of the biggest challenges facing our Agriculture College. The students will, as part of the course they are following, have to run their own businesses and show that they are able to create business plans and manage accounts. I’m hoping that they will be able to appreciate the power in spreadsheets. It is probably a cliché to suggest that education should transform the student’s thinking, but it is, none the less, true. If we can’t push our students to the ’eureka’ moment and unlock new, creative levels of thinking in them we will not be doing our job properly. I’m sure there will be those among you who would think that waxing lyrical about spreadsheets as a tool for motivating and challenging students is a symptom of ‘losing the plot’. I hope not.

On our recent field trip to the illegal livestock market our students had an opportunity to talk to a very successful entrepreneur. He didn’t really look like the most obvious candidate to be the next Richard Branson. Sitting under a tree, half reclining on a blanket and watching over an assortment of veterinary drugs in tatty looking bottles and packets, he looked distinctly unprofessional. Appearances are often deceptive. The students discovered that he made a very good living going from market to market selling his treatments, and that he owned a thriving ‘Agrovet’ shop in one of the local towns. His enthusiasm for his business, (which became apparent once you started to talking to him), inspired some of our students to reconsider their opinions of enterprise and entrepreneurship.

We are hoping that the students’ enthusiasm for business will help them to make a good start on the initial business planning that they will have to do after half-term. We plan to introduce them to the delights of ‘bean counting’ and financial forecasting. A good spreadsheet can, (believe it or not), be like a good book. It should tell a story and be capable of producing a happy ending. I’m looking forward to teaching our students the skills they will need to make their spreadsheets come alive.

As we ponder the ‘will it, won’t it’ change in the weather I’m also hoping that the students will enjoy counting real beans in July – when we harvest a bumper crop of legumes!