Junior Achievement Day

Yesterday Craig and I volunteered at a local elementary school to participate in Junior Achievement Day. Junior Achievement is a program that teaches kids about business, money, and the part both play in the community. I taught a second grade class and Craig taught a fifth grade class. My lesson taught the kids what the government is ...and we even talked about taxes. I did this one exercise in which we pretended that all the kids worked for a donut shop. We pretended it was pay day and I gave them each $5 (fake money of course). They were so excited. You would have thought I was giving them real money. Then I went on to explain government workers and how they too needed a pay day and that they get paid by taxes. I explained that everyone had to pay taxes to pay the government workers (since we all use their services...firefighters, police officers, teachers). When I went around the room and collected $2 from everyone they were UPSET! They were literally shouting, "THAT'S UNFAIR! I WANT TO KEEP ALL MY MONEY!!!" Some even tried to hide their money from me! Oh my goodness, it was soooo funny! They felt a little better once I also taxed the government workers. It was funny...because they were expressing how we all feel on tax day. It was seriously Hilarious!

Craig had a funny experience too. First I have to give out props to him. I wasn't sure how he would take to teaching a fifth grade class, by himself...all day (he was one of the few volunteers that didn't have another volunteer to teach with). He did a really great job. He really got into it, going above and beyond the required material. He went as far as doing mock interviews with the kids after they made resumes. A couple of the kids even elected to stay in and not go out to recess to work on their resumes! I even snuck in and watched him in action for a little while. I'm impressed! Hmmm...maybe his calling is teaching!

In any event, his funny event took place right at the beginning when he introduced himself. He said he was an engineer and asked the students if they knew what an engineer was. One little boy raised his hand and said, "An engineer is someone that gets paid a lot of money to be right only half the time...that is what my dad said an engineer was."

HILARIOUS! I love it!

It turned out to be a lot of fun! It is a program that all schools should take part in. Learning about money, money management, taxes, jobs, resumes, etc. is stuff we don't learn in school, yet it is something we all have to do. Without a doubt, we need to find more of this kind of learning in schools...grade school through college.