Students in the Child Growth and Development (CGD) classes here at BPHS are normally busy with caring for and teaching the preschoolers.
Right now, the preschoolers are on their break until February, but that doesn’t mean that the students aren’t still teaching.
This January, CGD Levels 2 and 3 are going to elementary schools in Bethel Park to teach about simple economics for Junior Achievement (JA) Day.
Students will be attending the Benjamin Franklin Elementary School on Tuesday, Jan. 14, and Thursday, Jan. 23.
JA is the largest USA organization that is dedicated to teaching the youth about skills and knowledge surrounding economics. They hope that providing this education will prepare young people for their own economic success in the future.
On the Junior Achievement USA website, they advertise their purpose as, “to inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy.” They achieve this goal by hiring volunteers from many different areas of life that go to teach lessons provided by JA.
Some specific ideas taught by JA are entrepreneurship, how to be smart with money, and the value of work. While JA teachers teach through tried and true methods such as vocabulary flashcards, slideshows, and true and false questions, that doesn’t mean JA day can’t be fun.
Maggie Babyak, who volunteered for JA this year and last said: “We do a lot of fun games that the kids love. The kids and I really liked the game we did where they picked expensive items that they want, and they told us how they would pay for them, cash, debit, credit, or check. Some of them said they would buy things like a yacht or the moon using cash, so it was really funny too.”
They also play games with their peers. One game they play involves keeping track of toy money that they both earn and spend, and another involves making their own restaurant. The kids pick their restaurants name and what kinds of food they sell, all while they have to keep a budget of what their restaurant had to spend for its upkeep.
The skills that JA provides are indispensable because the lessons that they teach are not normally taught in elementary school. Teaching young children about economics is incredibly valuable. The earlier kids start to learn about money, the earlier they will be ready to take on the world with their knowledge.
