November 6, 2023

More than 50 fifth graders, their teachers and parent volunteers headed to JA BizTown (Junior Achievement USA) for a morning of participating as citizens in a simulated town. Each student was assigned a job within the community, with job duties that interacted with and affected each other. They were paid for their work, opened savings and checking accounts, and even wrote checks to buy products from one another.  They also had a mayor who opened and closed the day with a town meeting.

The students were divided into businesses and organizations.

The Café

City Hall

Comcast

Gas & Electric

Key Bank

Onsemi

Oregon Humane Society

NW Sports

Pacific Office Automation

UPS

Unitus Community Credit Union

Walmart

At the BizTown simulation, students were given the opportunity to exercise philanthropy by donating their money to the Oregon Humane Society.

The students had their own BZTV television station with interviews and business ads written and starring our own students.

The CEOs and CFOs of each business were interviewed by Joy, the TV host.  Each one was asked their personal opinion of BizTown.  Michael of NW Sports stated, “BizTown is a very good place, when you get older, and when you get a job, you need to learn how to do the job. You can’t sit around and not have a job.” 

During his interview, Timothy of The Café found his experience to be “… fun, not too complicated, not too easy, really fun,” and found “all employees [at The Café to be] hardworking and kind to customers.” The financial aspect was important to Ella at BZTV, “it’s a great learning experience for kids to know what they do when they get older and know how to do their job and do paychecks.”

The overall consensus came from Grace of Comcast as she shared, “I really like it, it’s really fun, it gets us ready to be an adult.”

Thank you to this excellent non-profit organization (https://jausa.ja.org/programs/ja-biztown) that provides a rich real-world curriculum that our students got to experience firsthand!

END

Written by Karen Curtis and Grace Dugger

Photos by Grace Dugger