Lessons in Community

A Day in the Community:

Students arrive at BizTown already knowing what job they will perform and where they will be working. Several weeks before the visit, students are put through an interview process. Newell, along with the other fifth-grade teachers, spend several sessions teaching and practicing interviewing techniques. Students are then put through the interviewing process with parent volunteers acting as hiring managers.

In order to help students select positions to interview for, guidance counselor Tammy Breymaier teaches them career lesson. These lessons are designed to help students identify their individual personality style. This provides students the opportunity to determine if they are a problem-solver, a thinker, a helper or a doer. Breymaier guides students to apply for jobs best suited to their styles. Students then read through the BizTown classified ads to pinpoint jobs that will allow them to excel based upon their individual skills and personalities.

Students who are interested in becoming mayor or the attorney for the day must be elected. Classes hold an election at school where each candidate signs an “intent to run” form, writes a speech and then delivers that speech to their BizTown constituents. Afterwards students cast return to their classrooms to vote.

For students, the day at BizTown is anything but play. Parent volunteers are on hand only to ensure students are completing all outlined tasks and to provide guidance on completing those tasks. “Even though it’s a lot of work ahead of time, by the time kids get there, they know what they are doing,” said Newell.

Each business has a product to sell. It’s up to the students in each shop to agree on how to price their merchandise. The lesson is to learn to price products low enough to sell, yet high enough to bring in a profit at the end of the day. Fifth-grader Michael Donelan, whose job was CEO of ISG Energy, experienced the challenge of finding the right price. When asked what he’d do differently next time he said, “I’d try to set better prices. You can make a profit if you price something high, but no one may buy it at that price.”

Ella Porterfield, the town D.J., found learning how to run all of the equipment challenging. She was also confronted with selecting the right mix of songs to keep listeners happy. “All of the songs were old,” she said. “I didn’t know any of them, but Mrs. Ring helped me find ones that worked.”

Alaina Hilaman was the CEO of the travel agency. Getting organized was the biggest challenge for her group. “Make sure you read all of the directions,” she said. With people coming in and out of the shops making purchases and collecting money for bills, she felt being better organized would have made the job easier.

Educational Value:

The program is designed around state standards. Junior Achievement requires program participants to have their students take a pre-test before the unit and to complete 22 units featuring lessons in financial literacy, citizenship, profit and loss, entrepreneurship, taxes and workforce readiness. All but two of those lessons are taught as regular classroom curriculum before students even arrive at BizTown.

After their trip to BizTown, students complete a post-test. “Junior Achievement will take a look at the scores and determine how to make adjustments on how to beef up their curriculum,” said Newell. One change this year was the elimination of the nature shop. It has been replaced by the travel agency in order to meet the new curriculum standards addressing longitude and latitude in the Western Hemisphere. Biztown addressed this by offering students the opportunity to purchase a trip to Peru with the Biztown money they earned from their jobs.

Students learn how to write a check, balance a checkbook and make a deposit-all experiences they said were some of the most valuable lessons they learned at BizTown.

Although students aren’t formally assessed on their BizTown visit, teachers do utilize materials to give vocabulary quizzes using economic terms and assess math skills utilizing checks and registers as part of their tests.

At the end of the session, students work with their classroom teacher to develop a presentation of their experiences and learning. Two students are then selected to present this information to Granville business and community members at a rotary meeting.

The lessons students learn throughout the program are designed to teach them valuable life-lessons. These lessons are designed to enable them to explore options and to make smart choices about their future careers.

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