JA prez meets with Galion business, education leaders

Sarah Ein­se­len — Staff

Junior Achieve­ment vol­un­teer Jen­nifer Kuns shows what a JA cur­ricu­lum packet looks like. Kuns will be teach­ing JA ses­sions in Judy Cortelletti’s second-grade class at Galion Pri­mary School this spring.

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

Ten Galion and county busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tives learned about Junior Achieve­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in the area at a Jan. 19 gath­er­ing in the Galion Area Cham­ber of Com­merce office with JA of North Cen­tral Ohio pres­i­dent Dave Best.

Junior Achieve­ment was founded in 1919 to inspire and pre­pare young peo­ple to suc­ceed in a global econ­omy. JA pro­grams edu­cate youth about work readi­ness, entre­pre­neur­ship and finan­cial lit­er­acy with the help of real-world busi­ness men­tors. “This was the businessman’s answer to 4-H,” Best said. The North Cen­tral Ohio chap­ter was founded in 1964 and Craw­ford County’s six-county chap­ter merged with it in 2008.

Each com­mu­nity busi­ness vol­un­teer teaches five to eight hour-long ses­sions a year in a local K-12 class­room, using a pack of mate­ri­als that JA pro­vides. In a few class­rooms, a vol­un­teer might deliver the ses­sion series twice, once in fall and once in spring, and occa­sion­ally a class will request a one-time, day­long ses­sion called “JA in a Day” instead of the five– to eight-week series.

JA is meant to com­ple­ment what teach­ers are already doing in their classrooms.

“Many of our edu­ca­tors are teach­ing very impor­tant skills,” Best said, “but many times when a suc­cess­ful busi­ness per­son comes in, stu­dents make a connection—say, ‘ah, now I see.’”

Jen­nifer Kuns, the lone JA vol­un­teer in Galion schools, illus­trated how one of her stu­dents con­nected what she’d been learn­ing to real life.

“We did the pretest and talked about jobs that they may want,” Kuns recounted. “One lit­tle girl raised her hand and said, ‘naw, I don’t want to work.’” Then dur­ing the ses­sion, Kuns taught from the JA cur­ricu­lum about what taxes go to pay for—the fire depart­ment, bet­ter streets and other pur­poses. “And then at the end of it when we did our post-test, she said ‘I want to work now because I want to sup­port my firemen.’”

As of Jan. 18, nine Galion kinder­garten and sec­ond grade teach­ers had requested JA for this spring, Best said. One vol­un­teer so far had been con­nected with a class. More teach­ers may be inter­ested in hav­ing JA visit their classes, accord­ing to Galion schools cur­ricu­lum direc­tor Sandy Pow­ell. She was one of the ten in atten­dance at the JA meeting.

“It is part of our social stud­ies cur­ricu­lum, but what JA can do is bring in real busi­ness peo­ple,” Pow­ell said. “Teach­ers teach it but it’s just so nice to have a per­son in the com­mu­nity talk about busi­ness. It takes a busi­ness per­son to be able to answer some of the questions.”

“And it’s excit­ing for them (the stu­dents) when they see some­one new,” Kuns added.

Another advan­tage for teach­ers, Best said, is that JA pro­grams align to Ohio state learn­ing stan­dards and are free for the schools. “We have, as long as I can remem­ber, always had more demand from our schools than we can sup­ply,” he said. He wants to have more JA pro­grams in this area now, since last year the num­ber of pro­grams decreased more than was desirable.

Best out­lined the val­ues that drive JA’s efforts. They include a belief in young people’s bound­less poten­tial; a com­mit­ment to market-based eco­nomic prin­ci­ples; a pas­sion for the work and hon­esty, integrity and excel­lence in how it’s done; a respect for everyone’s tal­ents, cre­ativ­ity and per­spec­tives; a belief in the power of part­ner­ship and col­lab­o­ra­tion; and a con­vic­tion of the moti­va­tional and edu­ca­tional impact of rel­e­vant, hands-on learning.

It’s the only youth devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to the rel­e­vancy of edu­ca­tion to future eco­nomic suc­cess, Best said, and that focuses on help­ing youth real­ize the oppor­tu­ni­ties and real­i­ties of the 21st-century work­place. Besides con­nect­ing busi­ness lead­ers and young peo­ple to incul­cate free mar­ket prin­ci­ples, the orga­ni­za­tion pro­vides phil­an­thropic and vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness who want to train, engage and empower employ­ees, he continued.

“I have talked to so many CEOs and I ask them, ‘what is your great­est chal­lenge today?’” Best said. “And they say, it’s find­ing qual­i­fied workers.”

JA con­ducts for­ma­tive, sum­ma­tive and lon­gi­tu­di­nal stud­ies of the stu­dents who have gone through JA pro­grams. It also has inde­pen­dent eval­u­a­tions con­ducted of its pro­grams, some­thing that sets JA apart from other youth orga­ni­za­tions, Best said. The stud­ies gauge the knowl­edge stu­dents gain, the skills they develop and the changes they expe­ri­ence in their atti­tudes and behav­iors. JA also mea­sures teach­ers’ and vol­un­teers’ sat­is­fac­tion with the program.

For more infor­ma­tion about JA in Craw­ford County, e-mail JA senior dis­trict direc­tor Denice Schafer at denice@jaofnco.org or call (330) 434‑1875.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Jan 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.