These teens are getting a taste of the “Real World”!
by Amy Rauch Neilson
Reality shows aren’t just for television anymore. High school students at Chinook High School in Chinook, Montana have brought a touch of reality — the real world — into the classroom – with a little help from their teacher, Kelly Mazurkiewicz.
Rolling up their Sleeves
The 11 students in Kelly’s Career Class aren’t just learning how to run a business by reading a textbook — they’re getting hands-on experience. “In entrepreneurship (class), we learn how to create and manage a business,” students Taran Huestis, Tyler Brost, Stewart Maddox, and Connlin Brown reported in the Career Class group essay they wrote. “We learn about careers and what the people in the career do and learn. We also learn how to keep a successful business running, how to attract consumers with advertisements for a business, and buyers to buy our products.”
The YoungBiz website is an important part of the students’ education. They use the site to read stories about other young entrepreneurs, to complete the lessons in the YoungBiz Trek online course, and to glean tips on running a successful business. “On Youngbiz.com, we have been doing all the lessons and activities, and this is where we mainly learn the skills and strengths of an entrepreneur, like when they need to be strong in a difficult situation or how they deal with different problems,” said students Janelle Downs, Elysia Lekang, Brandy Nash, and Cheyanne Gilmore in their group essay.
The Real World
Kelly began teaching Career Class as a pilot class to freshman at the high school about three years ago. “We started the class because we believed that our students needed more direction and understanding of how many careers are really out there, other than the so-called regular careers,” she said. “The principal and I — we wanted to give the students more opportunities and some sense of direction of what they wanted to do after high school. We wanted to create a class that would allow them to connect to the “real world”.
Kelly’s Career Class does just that. It explores both entrepreneurship and personal finance, giving her students an opportunity to get a taste of what it would be like to own a business as well as how to take care of their money, both now and in the future. Part of the class is devoted to teaching students the basics of stock market and students participate in an Internet-based stock market simulation.
“Buying and selling stocks since the beginning of the year has helped us to learn what the stock market is all about,” said students Tyler Molyneaux, Lane Schmitt, Jason Haider, and Josh Jones in the Career Class group essay they wrote. Classmates Janelle Downs, Elysia Lekang, Brandy Nash, and Cheyanne Gilmore write in their group essay: “We learn how people in the stock business are successful in the stock market and how they could possibly become very wealthy.”
Seizing the Day
“I believe students should have every opportunity they can and we teach them that you can become an entrepreneur at any age,” Kelly said. She also believes that, since Chinook is a rural community, her students don’t always have the same opportunities that their city counterparts do.
If that’s the case, her students are certainly making up for lost time. “We are learning about becoming an entrepreneur and the skills and strengths we need to have to be strong in today’s business world,” Janelle Downs, Elysia Lekang, Brandy Nash, and Cheyanne Gilmore wrote in their essay.
Life Lessons
Kelly hopes that her students will long remember what they’ve learned in Career Class. “I hope they come away with knowing that they can do anything in life that they want to do, no matter where they have grown up,” she said. “I also hope they have learned that there is a lot more out there then they realize, and that they should take every opportunity they are given and make it into something.”
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