Meet the teachers who help infuse BSS students with entrepreneurial spirit and business savvy. by Dana Lacey
Laura Mustard
In high school, Laura Mustard loved economics she admits she wasn’t your typical teenager. In university she earned a double major in Economics and English, not a traditional pairing. “One’s practical and one’s… less practical,” she jokes. “My dad used to say, ‘you have to be employable.’”
Ms. Mustard began her career at General Motors’ computer department. “That was a very male dominated environment women were secretaries or did corporate training.” Not so Ms. Mustard; she preferred to roll up her sleeves and immerse herself in the nitty gritty of programming. But she soon realized that her true passion lay in teaching. Today she teaches Business at BSS.
Ms. Mustard endured the grind of a double major in order to make herself, as her dad advised, more employable, but also because she dreamed of becoming a teacher. “You know how you grow up, seeing your parents do certain things? My mom was an elementary school teacher. I used to pretend I was a teacher as a little kid.” BSS was a logical fit for her combined passions. “BSS is the only independent girls school with a very full range of business programs, Accounting, Entrepreneurship, Financial Securities, co-op programs within the department,” Ms. Mustard says, “all these things that most independent schools can’t offer because they don’t have the expertise.” “The best part,” she says, “is that every program is designed to offer something the students are genuinely interested in.”
BSS runs with the student as entrepreneur idea, and gives a lot of leeway to educators wanting to try something new, Ms. Mustard says. When they’re empowered to run with their own ideas, BSS girls really shine. “You’re allowed to caution and advise, but ultimately they’re going to do it on their own. It’s all about trusting them.”
This year a group from Ms. Mustard’s class was inspired by Silly Bands, colourful elastic bands shaped to look like dinosaurs, stars and myriad other designs, which kids wear as layered bracelets and dreamed up the Bish Band. Her students created their own design, came up with a price that included the bulk cost and U.S. conversion rate and duty tax; everything that was needed to bring Bish Bands from concept to fashion statement.
Other entrepreneurial ventures included home-baked cookies, handmade jewelry, imported Japanese specialty gifts and fair trade products.
Whenever possible, Ms. Mustard uses BSS itself as a case study in her lessons. “The School is full of enterprising people,” she says, “from the student run box office to collaborations with other schools to the successful marketing campaign.”
If there’s one lesson she wants her students to take away from her classes, it’s that “business is not a man’s world,” Ms. Mustard says. The School tackles this in part with the Val Stock Memorial Speaker Series, which invites powerful female role models, including the occasional Old Girl, to speak to the girls about their experience in business. Of course, BSS girls have a leg up in finding personal role models. “A lot of students come from backgrounds where women in their lives are involved in business,” she says. “Some students even have CEOs for moms.”
“It’s important for girls to have the entrepreneurial spirit,” Ms. Mustard says. “Women look at the world differently, and see different opportunities. If you don’t encourage women to act on the opportunities they see, there will be something missing in the world, and too much from one perspective.”
It makes you wonder what once unleashed on the world these girls will come up with.
Fraser Landry
Fraser Landry got his first taste of entrepreneurship at an early age. His dad, a choir conductor, hired him to man the box office and sell tickets for his performances.
In high school he discovered mentorship organization Junior Achievement, and his attitude quickly shifted gears. “JA probably saved my life,” he says. “It was great because it was really hands on; you learned by doing, by experiential teaching. It was a place where I got some positive feedback from adults,” something that was missing in his high school, he says. After high school he spent a decade as JA’s program manager, where he managed kids who ran their own companies.
Meanwhile, he studied business at university, and then philosophy. “I wasn’t ready to enter the working world, and philosophy was the thing I found the least like the working world,” he jokes. After graduating, he spent 10 years as the general manager of Kinko’s Copies Canada Limited before attending Teachers’ College at the University of Toronto.
“I think I’ve always done things that involved teaching and working with kids, but I resisted teaching because that’s what my father did… now I think I wish I had done it sooner.”
At BSS, Mr. Landry teaches Introduction to Business, Entrepreneurial Studies, International Business, Civics, Careers and Philosophy. He’s also the School’s Student Leadership Coordinator, where he designs and delivers leadership training and retreats, oversees the annual student election and acts as a mentor, coach and adviser to BSS’s Prefects. While he’d taught both boys and girls at JA, BSS is a whole new experience, he says. “I had to get used to letting the girls be more social. I think the girls like working on real problems they can get their hands on, and can feel make a difference.” That’s where his philosophy major came into play.
“My main goal when teaching is to get the girls to think about the world they’re living in; the philosophy side of me just wants them to question everything. If they see things they think they can change, I want them not to just accept them.” He adds, “BSS has girls who are and will be in a position to make a difference.”
In March, Mr. Landry took a class of his Business students to China, with stops in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, where, in addition to the more traditional cultural sites, the girls visited factories and other places of business. China was a logical choice because of the country’s current and continuing position in the world, he says.
Mr. Landry’s teaching philosophy is proudly student centred. He lets them solve their own problems as much as possible. He credits the School for encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit in its girls. “The administration has been very supportive of kids taking over part of the School and selling stuff.”
BSS’s annual Deck The Hall event is the best place to see the entrepreneurship class in action. “There’s a group of girls that, for the past three years in a row, have sold close to 1,000 chocolate covered strawberries.” Other groups sell things like cookie dough and greeting cards. One young student makes her own jewelry, and has expanded her business beyond the School.
He’s proud of an ongoing Entrepreneurial Studies project that launched last year. “Instead of doing a one off project, the girls wanted to something sustainable.” The entrepreneurs teamed up with the Finance department, and the result was The biSHOP, an aptly named supply store in the School that the girls run by themselves at a profit.
“Of course I’m not going to let them go down the road by themselves,” Mr. Landry says, “but I let them sink or swim on their own.”
Mary Ellen Moran
Mary Ellen Moran has long been enamored with numbers. “They can be used to tell a story” she says, “so long as you speak the right language.” She loves accounting, which uses the abstract to explain the concrete supply, demand, and a company’s bottom line.
After high school, Ms. Moran spent four years in the numbers industry as an auditor for banking behemoth Royal Bank of Canada. She was younger, much younger, than her colleagues, and one of very few women in the field. The RBC job was quite the career kick-start: it sent her around the world, and within a few years she’d travelled and worked in Buenos Aries, Argentina, Brazil, the Caribbean and New York City. “I was just in the right place at the right time,” she says. She moved on to the Bank of Montreal to get a taste of the investment side of banking. “It was great experience,” she says, but she wasn’t convinced she wanted to make a career of it. She began thinking about her future, and remembered how much she’d loved an earlier job working with teens at Junior Achievement. She took a year off to attend Teachers’ College, got her MBA, and never looked back.
In the 11 years Ms. Moran has been at BSS, she has taught Accounting, Entrepreneurship, International Business, Financial Securities and Introduction to Business.
“When I got to BSS, I realized I have a real passion for teaching girls,” she says. She finds that girls have fewer boundaries, are more open to discussion and collaboration: it’s not uncommon for Ms. Moran to spend the bulk of a class answering increasingly pointed questions from her students. “I love the level of interaction with the girls our discussions can be so vibrant. They ask great questions that can send you travelling down some great tangents.” The girls then bring that discussion home to continue with their parents.
Ms. Moran especially loves teaching this generation of girls about business because, she says, “They don’t know anything of the past. The anti-girl glass ceiling, socially accepted discrimination today’s girls won’t face the same obstacles that most Old Girls faced.” More importantly, these girls aren’t weighed down by the sense that someone is going to hold them back; they truly believe that girls can do anything. And that, above all, is what Ms. Moran wants her students to take away from her course.
“Whether they choose to go into business or become an optometrist, we teach them the skills to help them operate in the world. We teach them how to interpret marketing and understand personal finance and how the stock market works. We want them to know about all the opportunities open to them.”
Ms. Moran’s high school passion has not disappeared. Accounting is still her favourite class to teach. She loves helping girls realize the power of numbers. “I know I’m not raising a class of accountants. But it’s important to know what doors are going to be open for you, and know ways of creating that opportunity. If you can read numbers, you can make decisions. Accounting’s purpose is decision making.” When girls leave Ms. Moran’s class, they’re better armed to take on the world.
Ann Shen
Ann Shen always thought she’d be an accountant, like her mom. But after two years working co-op at an accounting firm, she realized the career wasn’t for her. “It wasn’t what I was interested in, personality wise.” Instead, she got her math degree, with a specialty in business studies. “Somewhere in the middle I thought I wanted to be a doctor,” she laughs. “Teaching was my third choice.” This time, it stuck. Ms. Shen teaches Business, Math and Computer Science at BSS.
Ms. Shen’s Grade 10 Introduction to Business course is the girls’ first introduction to business concepts, and covers the basics: entrepreneurship, personal finance and marketing. “There’s a little bit of everything,” she says. “A lot of the topics they can go home and talk to mom and dad about, which comes up at parent interviews,” she says. “Parents will say, ‘My daughter has never wanted to talk about business, but now we’re having this conversation about finances.”
At this age 14 and 15 a lot of the girls already have a savings account, or a debit card, perhaps an RESP of savings bonds, but they really don’t understand big picture personal finance, Ms. Shen says. “I try to teach them the value of money, start to get them thinking about budgeting, and about how much they actually have to make to live. They quickly realize it’s very expensive to live in Toronto, and they learn that to live the lifestyle they’re currently living what it costs for that cell phone, for that daily coffee they’re going to have to work really hard.”
Ms. Shen also teaches Introduction to Accounting to Grade 11s. “I enjoy teaching because I love being around people, and I enjoy learning. That’s part of my philosophy. Some girls will say I’m fairly strict, because if you don’t have rules in a classroom, things don’t get done. But I care about them and am really passionate about the subjects.”
Each year she gives her students an assignment: make some stock “purchases”, and then track them. “Last year, nobody made any money,” she says, which was an opportunity to learn about the business cycle. “It’s interesting because they could see the direct results of the recession.”
This year, the business department is trying out a brand new project. The class chooses a business venture, and each student has her own role. “They have full reign in choosing the idea, contacting the suppliers, raising capital by selling shares…and when we wrap up, they go to the bank and give money back to their shareholders.”
The girls spotted an opportunity. The School recently lightened its all out ban on nail polish to allow certain, natural colours. Each student is responsible for selling shares in the venture to raise the money needed to buy the polish. They determine how much capital they need to raise, decide on a share price, print off the shares, and hone their elevator pitches to solicit students, teachers, and parents to buy shares. “It’s not always easy,” Ms. Shen says, “and there are parents that demand full shareholder value presentations from their daughters before they pony up the cash.” So far, their hard work is paying off: The class made a deal with a supplier, and have since sold over 200 bottles of pale pink polish.
