JA Biz Town

Today I had the opportunity (although unwilling, I admit) to go and volunteer down town at the Gateway in a place called "JA Biz Town" for Lauren's fifth grade class. Biz Town is set up exactly like a tiny town. Unknowing what it would look like, I visualized it to have cardboard businesses(Deseret News, Smith's, several banks, Best Buy, utility companies, etc), but was absolutely stunned that there are actually very small buildings on the top floor in the Gateway Children's Museum. Everything had to be done by the students...for example, I "worked" at Deseret News and my job was to help if any questions were asked and to help keep the "newsroom" on task. There was a CEO, CFO, two photographers, three reporters, an ad exec and an editor. They had to do everything from payroll, invoices, actual photographs, articles, interviews and on and on. These kids were so smart at all of this. I had to read the manual a couple of times to figure out how to do something and the kids just figured it out about the same time as me. Not too good for me, huh? The kids got "paid" for their work with monopoly type money and were able to buy things around the "Biz Town". There were town meetings, voting, furniture stores, lots of complaints to print in the paper and just funny things. This was one of the best experiences ever for me...not only because it was such a cool field trip, but because I can really see these kids being prepared for the future and let me tell ya, THEY ARE SMART AND QUICK!! By the way, I fell in love with Lauren even more (is that possible?) watching her run around doing her job as CFO...I will post pictures as soon as I can find my cable!