STORYTELLING

Challenge & Selection

In the beginning of year 2013 me and my colleague decided to start an innovative

After school activity for 4 – 14 years old kids. A very simple concept based on math to help  children develop and teach them through a positive discipline. What bothered us, that three  teams already failed to make this franchise teaching work. Not one, three teams tried and  they couldn´t break into market in this pretty international city.

We started doing a research: contacted previous teams to learn what happened and

where were mistakes. It occurs the main problem which stood in a way was a conservative,  reserved society. This didn´t sound good. No matter how good this franchise is, we  understood it can be really tough to start something completely different, new, never heard  before. Not very clearly but there was mentioned language issue. As English language is not  a mother tongue in this country, it can be a big struggle to start business here. So to have a  big picture and great ideas not enough, we needed a really good plan and effective solutions.  Storytelling was a natural thing to do because from the beginning we wanted to do a  meaningful work, to create value in a society, to leave impact. But this design thinking tool  did come to our minds not at the very first moment. As the franchise teaching is orientated  to smart kids mostly, I remember struggling on how to write an advertisement that it would  attract local people attention. Once again I have to highlight it´s a pretty conservative and not  very open society, also the main accent of education system in general is not about smart  kids. But me and my colleague – we are foreigners and our experience in teaching field let us  broaden the span of this franchise teaching. This is how we decided to tell a story of my  colleague´s kid.  Also there was decision made to focus on each kid and his/ her progress  individually, to involve parents – build community, to teach in 4 languages  - local included.  This helped us to avoid the mistakes of previous teams.      Application

After the decision came brainstorming of ideas to whom we should tell the story and

how. Being a foreigner myself I suggested to go for expatriates – to advertise in their societies  first. This is how we attracted attention of few parents. With some of them we talked on  phone, with others we met and found out their struggles, everyday battles and concerns  toward kids. That way in our hands appeared a lot of valuable data, which helped us to build  strategy and move forward and expand the original idea, focus of this teaching franchise.

We organized an event for parents and children that they could see and get familiar

not only with the building, surroundings, but also with staff – me and my colleague. During  that day the compelling story of my colleague´s kid, who has differently wired brain and is  multilingual boy, touched many of parents. A lot of them could relate to not only language  struggles, but also brain work, challenges in everyday life both at home and kindergarten. In  the second part of the event, we did demo class to the kids. Parents could participate as well  and see what kind of after school activities/ education their children will get, what are they  going to be involved into, what values are important to us and how the teaching process will

be done. This is how we signed contract with few parents and started our focus group of 6  kids in 2013 March.

We needed focus group to test and see, be sure if this method of making children use

both sides of the brain isn´t just sounds-too-good-to-be-true thing, how it really works, what  are our daily challenges, how we can help children who are wired differently, how we can  grow and get financially secure too.       Insight & Approach      So from gathering info with ethnographic interviews and then brainstorming, planning

and organizing event for parents, demo classes, to teaching and building community, creating  value and accepting children with really differently wired brain. We work with amazing young  children who are not only smart, but strong in their mind, creative and will shape our future.  It was not easy to decide and start working with kids who have modular autism, dyslexia,  autistic brain, ADHD, ADD, who develop slower, who are extremely introverted, etc. This  foreign thinking approach in a local society now gives benefits to many local families as well.  Parents needed to be heard and understood. We listened to at least 150 hundred stories, saw  many tears, helplessness, heart breaking stories – some of them where parents simply gave  up because of lack of knowledge, not very engaged specialists, etc. Some families in our school  started great friendships and now they share stories and their kids are good friends. There´s  no longer story of just one child.

It started small – just with few kids and there was some uncertainty, really tough

moments. As both of us have growth mind set, we were able to find a solution no matter the  struggle, e.g., when it was clear that it´s not enough to spread the word about our work via  social networks, we organized summer school – a lot of parents started to talk about us and  till this day we have positive feedback and have waiting list for the kids to enroll in our school.

At this moment I can proudly say that this what we called franchise teaching/ method

now is called school and it expanded in almost 3 years from 6 to 94 kids (2011 February) and  no longer 2 teachers work but 3. Of course, we are still growing, it´s not the final phase. And  there are way much more ideas how to broaden this teaching method.

