What Makes TEA Special?
What sets the Teen Entrepreneur Academy (TEA) apart from other business summer camps?
The curriculum, teaching methodologies, entrepreneur speakers, and university relationship is what makes TEA special and different.
TEA is not just a week-long summer program; it’s a lifetime commitment to being "uncommon" in your business and career endeavors. It’s never too early to learn business principles. We offer the Academy because we are passionate about education and preparing young people for success in life and business.
- TEA is a non-profit program, an educational community service of Concordia University. Other business summer camps are usually for-profit and usually are just renting other university facilities.
- Our curriculum offers theory combined with practical lesson plans supplemented with group activities and active learning. We take field trips to companies and talk with owners.
- Our teaching methodology includes gifted instructors who use a variety of teaching modalities, utilizing "whole brain" teaching. This teaching is specially designed for the high school mind and makes learning more fun, engaging and exciting. Engagement-centered lesson design, gradient learning, and multi-modality teaching are incorporated into lessons plans.
- Learn-by-doing, hands-on, real-world business startup experience. Students write real-world basic business plan presentations and are coached/mentored by successful entrepreneurs.
- Competition: the best business plan presentation team wins $1,000 to help seed the new business or reward the winning students’ plan.
- Business planning startup approach is best practices. Our emphasis is on actually starting a real business (not hypothetical) and how to really launch. The Lean Startup process is taught with a focus on the Customer Development Model. Today, this is one of the most cost-effective ways to start a business. Students are encouraged to fail, to fail fast and learn what doesn't work in order to focus on what does work.
- Students develop a business model hypothesis, followed by a process of testing hypothesis and getting validation in order to go to market with the least amount of money and the shortest period of time. We also use the Business Model Canvas.