When I was growing up, my favorite Parade Magazine issue was the annual "What We Earn." I always looked for my fellow Utahans before the others. I would get so excited to see the different career paths. There were so many choices . . . like those school teachers who made all that money. The people featured all had one thing in common, big smiles on their faces. I could tell they all loved the career they had chosen whether they made $20 thousand or $120 thousand. It gave me a sense of excitement and anticipation of what I would be when (or if) I grew up. I still look forward to that magazine issue, and am sure you do too because we are all interested in our future, our children's futures, and let's be honest, the issue is just fun!
As I was looking over a similar article this morning, (not nearly as fun because there aren't real people's pictures and ages and hello, do I make that little of pay REALLY???) I got my usual Junior Achievement monologue going in my head. (Once I make you a JA believer, you will have JA analogies, monologues and all sorts of JA fun happen to you too!) JA is built upon three pillars: entrepreneurship, financial literacy and work readiness. Click here for a quick JA summary.
We all have needs, you know the food, clothing and shelter we learned about when we were little, and we need a career that will help us maintain those needs. This isn't rocket science, in fact, it is first grade JA. I love these fun articles because they help us understand if our dreams are feasible financially or not. My dream of sitting at home all day, eating an entire bag of chocolate chips while sitting at my laptop (okay it was only a half bag, but full bag sounds so much more dramatic) came true. Our students in first grade learn to choose careers that will facilitate their needs and their wants. HOW ABOUT THAT? I love it! By 5th grade, they visit JA City and are adults for a day. They learn that different positions within a company earn different incomes and how hard working in the business world really is. By 8th grade in Finance Park they experience a real-life situation with bills, a family, a mortgage and how to make those ends meet. (Even I am still working on that. . .back to 8th grade for me!)
Our JA students can look at these fun Parade articles and make decisions for their future because they are already one step ahead. One day I hope I see some of the incredible JA students I have met, featured in one of those articles as a school teacher, nurse, computer programmer, etc, with of course, nothing but a big smile on their face.
Click here for the not as fun as Parade article" I stumbled on (but is still a little fun).
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