Providing students with the opportunity to take part in educational competitions outside of the regular classroom is an excellent way to foster growth, teamwork and confidence within the students. Throughout my time at Burnaby Central, I was fortunate enough to be a part of, as a sponsor teacher, mentor, coach and judge, 2 separate business case competitions. The event I was most proud to be a part of, was the Burnaby Central ‘Beyond’ Business Case Competition. The reason is that most business case competitions are organized and run by a third party, say a University, however this competition was organized, and run COMPLETELY by students.

Not only did students from the Burnaby School District work together to gain sponsorships, set up and coordinate the venue, and run an extremely successful event, they did so in a very short time frame. It was an incredible opportunity to act as a mentor, and provide loose guidance, while watching these kids work hard to bring an abstract idea together into a formal event. I am honestly astonished at how well this turned out!

Not only did the students organize the traditional Business Marketing Case Competition, but they were also able to create challenges in many other areas of business, such as finance, human resources, and operations. And finally to top it off, there was a fantastic new innovation competition that allowed groups from schools across the board to come up with a new product and pitch it to a panel of judges!

This day was extremely successful because of the hard work of many students. I can’t wait to see how the second annual Beyond Competition goes.