Sixth-graders of Goshen Intermediate School ended over a week of small town industry at Junior Achievement’s Biztown Thursday. Photo by Dani Messick | The Goshen News
ELKHART — Sixth-graders at Goshen Intermediate School just wrapped up five days of exploring financial literacy in a mock realworld setting. Throughout last week and this week, over four hundred students from sixth-grade classes attended Junior Achievement Biz-Town, at ETHOS Instruction Center in Elkhart. Each class spent one day at Biz-Town with two to three other classes.
“Even though it’s one day, this gives them the chance to see ‘Oh, this is what people are like,’” said Goshen Intermediate School Master Teacher Andrew Kauffman.
JA BizTown helps teachers educate students on financial literacy from a young age with a physical mock-up of a real town.
“Teachers did a lot of work with classroom lessons before coming here as well, they had 8-12 lessons they had to do within their daily schedule before coming here,” Kauffman said.
Students in the town are assigned a job, there’s a mayor, and they make real money.
“This is a way for our students to understand what financial literacy looks like in the real world,” Kauffman said.
Students have job assignments, break times, paychecks, and debit cards to use to make purchases.
“They all have to keep track of what their purchases are,” Kauffman said. “They can go to different businesses where they can buy things with their debit card or with cash, but they have to go to the bank to withdraw cash. If they don’t have enough money, they obviously can’t buy anything.”
Students run every aspect of the tiny town, from the supply chain to the restaurant to the banking industry and postal service.
“In the supply area, they have to keep working, keeping all the businesses supplied and it’s not like they just do it one time and then they’re done,” Kauffman said. “It’s the same thing when they have to send letters in the mail. They have to create flyers to advertise their business as well. They’re constantly doing something.”
They use the money earned to purchase supplies to run their business and also to buy meals from other vendors.
“A lot of students start to figure out what the jobs require them to do, but also that they can’t leave their job even if they want to,” Kauffman said.
In addition, for entrepreneurs and CEOs, a job that might be popular among students isn’t as easy as just telling everyone else what to do.
“It’s not just one job — they have to do all the jobs,” Kauffman explained. “When other people go on breaks, then they have to pick up the slack.”
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