After the success of my ’12 days of Christmas’ EEUK blog a few Decembers ago, it’s no wonder I’ve been asked to reprise my role and bring you yuletide tidings of great enterprise educator joy once again!

The lead up to Christmas is often a time when we as Enterprise Educators get an opportunity to spend time together mulling over the year and celebrating our successes.  Whether you’re at the office Christmas party or you’ve managed to prise yourself from your computer to attend the inevitable canteen Christmas lunch, use the occasion to raise a glass to the good practice you and your team have produced over the past year.  Just promise me one thing; that you capture this good practice beyond the dinner table and share it across the EEUK network.  Whether it’s a piece for our newsletter, evidence in your EEUK Fellowship application, or as an entry into the ETC toolkit, what you have achieved should not only be celebrated by our community, but shared across our community to enable us all to flourish in our Enterprise Educator roles.

Now Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a “bah-humbug”.  Given the current state of affairs in the UK (I will not mention the ‘E’ or the ‘B’ word), I think we’ve had our fill of curmudgeonly displeasure in the lead up to the festive season.  To add to this, following Christmas there is the inevitable regret; “I shouldn’t have eaten so much”, “I shouldn’t have spent so much” e.t.c.  And yet, in true Kolb fashion, we manage to drag ourselves through post-Christmas reflective observation to New Year active experimentation and get ourselves to the gym or put a stop to buying nonessentials (well at least until payday).  Yet do we progress so far through the learning cycle with our own enterprise education practice as we lament the passing year?  More than likely we wait for module evaluations or feedback surveys from others to tell us what went well and what could be better.  This feedback is valuable.  However, I entreat you this New Year, like Ebenezer Scrooge, to take a moment to self-reflect on your own practice and at the point of active experimentation, I invite you to explore the wealth of personal and professional development opportunities EEUK has on offer to set yourself some New Year Enterprise Educator resolutions.  These could include but are not limited to attendance at an enterprise exchange event, an application to the Enterprise Education and Research Project Fund, or registering for our International Enterprise Educators Conference.  Whatever the enterprise educator resolution, EEUK will have something or someone there to support you in 2020.

Now in the words of Buddy the Elf “The best way of spreading Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear” so get yourself off to that Christmas party.  All that’s left for me and the EEUK team to say is we wish all those across the EEUK network a very Merry Christmas and a wonderfully happy New Year.

Dr Emily Beaumont

Vice-Chair, Enterprise Educators UK

Associate Professor and Director of The Marjon Business School