Future Powerhouses: Economics in Action!

On March 31, 2015, approximately 50 Newburgh fifth-graders, with their own college IDs and course schedules, became college students for the day, attending mini-classes and pushing themselves through athletic practice while interacting with 60 Mount Saint Mary College student volunteers.

The "College Sneak Peek" Event:

This Mount Saint Mary College event was cosponsored by the Conversations to Inspire Reading Children's Literature with Engagement Club (CIRCLE),the Men's Lacrosse team, and the Women's Soccer team. After organizing and executing a successful read-a-thon in fall 2014 as featured in the Poughkeepsie Journal, CIRCLE was approached by a local elementary school to arrange a similar experience for the whole fifth-grade which would serve as the students' field-trip. Understanding that, "Students apply to college in their senior year, but it is at least five years earlier, in the middle grades, when students really make the decision to go to college, and more importantly, when they must start taking steps to make that decision a reality," I understood that CIRCLE was

being provided an immense opportunity to greatly influence the course of fifty students' lives at a critical time (Breakthrough Collaborative, 2010, p. 1). Similarly, Robert Balfanz (2009) writes in "Putting Middle Grade Students on the Graduation Path" that, "It is during the middle grades that students either launch toward achievement and attainment, or slide off track and placed on a path of frustration, failure, and, ultimately, early exit from the only secure path to adult success" (p. 13). Knowing that many of the fifth-graders had not before stepped on a college campus and did not have family members or close family friends who attended college, it became our mission to have the concept of "college" and all of its benefits become part of students' knowledge. 

To meet our goal, we wanted students to learn about the admissions process and how to prepare for college, social life at college, and academic pursuits of college. Luckily CIRCLE had great support from the MSMC Admissions Department which arranged an information session and tour emphasizing not only the strengths of Mount Saint Mary College, but also the opportunities that generally come with attending college. Then, students were able to witness this message in action when they participated with MSMC students, more specifically members of the Men's Lacrosse and Women's Soccer teams, to experience athletics and get a taste of college sports practices. Next, CIRCLE members planned and implemented, with the help of Men's Lacrosse players and other MSMC volunteers, four mini-classes in some of the areas in which MSMC offers majors. In the nursing class, fifth-graders studied the relationship between heart rate and level of activity; in the math/science class, students studied slope and velocity by racing cars down ramps of different slopes; in the English class, students watched a video clip of college students protesting fossil fuel divestment and then debated environmental issues; in the combined business and information technology class, students created their own companies complete with a company website, t-shirt product, and video recording of their product commercial or pitch to venture capitalists just like on Shark Tank. During all of these "classes", the fifth-graders were treated as real college students working alongside MSMC students to accomplish tasks and gain an appreciation for college. 

   

Focusing on developing students' career and college readiness goes hand-in-hand with our goal as social studies educators to promote civic competence. Wanting students to actively engage with the college experience and feel like they were working as college students as opposed to being taught, CIRCLE members developed mini-classes based on constructivist tenets. In each mini-class, students were actively engaged as two of the mini-classes incorporated technology, and the other two were hands-on activities. Students explored each mini-class with peers which helped to build social interaction skills and heighten the experience: "Learning reflects a social process in which children engage in dialogue and discussion with themselves as well as with others (including teachers) as they develop intellectually" (Reys, Lindquist, Lambdin, & Smith, 2012, p. 22). 

Fostering Entrepreneurship through Economics: 
As I discussed in an earlier blog, one of the disciplines within social studies is economics. Economics studies how to balance infinite wants with scarce resources to make wise decisions. Therefore, most business decisions are economic decisions. During the event, fifth-graders worked with MSMC Business and Information Technology majors to create their own company websites. Nicole and I developed the structure of the mini-lesson by adapting ideas from Bizworld.  In short, Bizworld offers "hands-on, engaging programs...that teach valuable lessons about entrepreneurship, business, and financial responsibility while emphasizing the importance of valuable skills like collaboration, critical thinking, leadership, and creativity"(Bizworld: Making Entrepreneurship Fun for Kids). Allotting only thirty minutes for each group to actively engage in the mini-class, we had to select specific focuses of the program and adapt them to meet the needs of the event and students with whom we were working. We selected the following activities within the BizMovie program to adapt: 

 

The first change that I made was to not utilize worksheets as BizMovie does. Filling out worksheets would have wasted precious time and I felt it was more valuable for students to be thinking about, discussing, and apply the concepts instead, as they would in a true college setting. Therefore, the thirty-minute workshop utilized the activities of the worksheets above, but transformed them into the following experience: 

1. Fifth-graders and college students discussed what it means to be a business or information technology major at Mount Saint Mary College. College students shared their career goals for after graduation and how these majors would prepare them to reach those goals.
2. Next, students were presented with their real-world problem: Create a business. Each group of students' "company," was provided with a user-friendly website template from Google Sites. Students were asked to create the homepage of the website by displaying the company name created by the students, the names of the entrepreneurs creating the company, and to explain the mission of the company, the product they are selling, and their target buyers. 
3. Entrepreneurs then needed to design t-shirts for the company. Some companies decided that the t-shirts would be the main product being sold, while other companies selected to have t-shirts just be one of the products being sold to raise awareness for the company's bigger mission. Students then selected a price for the shirt and had to justify why they selected that price. Did it need to be easy for poorer people to buy as well? Is it a novelty item that not a lot of people should be wearing? 
4. Lastly, some companies created a video-recorded pitch to venture capitalists (as the students had seen on the popular show, Shark Tank) while others preferred to create a commercial to entice the public to purchase their product! 

This workshop was meaningful because it provided students an authentic task that taught "important ideas for understanding, appreciation, and life application" (NCSS). Additionally, because of the set up of the entire event, the presence of college students majoring in business and information technology, and the company website, "the significance and meaningfulness of the content was emphasized both in how it was presented to students and how it was develop through activities" (NCSS). The mini-class was integrative because it required students to create their own websites, company names, products, and pitches by channeling their personal "beliefs, values, and attitudes" (NCSS). Similarly, the students' active experience promoted their digital literacy as students worked first hand with a laptop building their company websites through Google Sites, and designing t-shirts with an interactive website. The mini-lesson can also be described as value-based as many companies designed products to help people, and made decisions about the cost of their products based on how it would impact people of different economic backgrounds. Therefore, they "consider[ed] the costs and benefits to various groups that are embedded in potential courses of action" (NCSS). Fourthly, the workshop was challenging for students because they were required to reconcile their ideas with other entrepreneurs to best meet the needs of their companies. Additionally, groups had to critically evaluate what would motivate venture capitalists to invest in their companies and what would motivate potential customers to buy their products. Lastly, students were active throughout the mini-class, constructing their own meaning of the concepts of "business" and "entrepreneurship," and making decisions for the health of their companies. Students were afforded the opportunity to be "independent and self-regulated learners" during an "authentic activity that called for real-life applications using the skills and content of the field" (NCSS). 

Examples of Student Websites: Smartbots and Air Floaters

 References

Balfanz, R. (2009). "Putting Middle Grades Students on the Graduation Path."Association for Middle Level Education - AMLE. 

Breakthrough Collaborative. (2010, January 1). Middle school: The fork in the road to college. Retrieved April 16, 2015, from https://www.breakthroughcollaborative.org/sites/default/files/bt-research-brief-ms-fork-in-the-road.pdf

National Council for the Social Studies. “Principles of Teaching and Learning.” Expectations of Excellence: Curriculum Standards for Social Studies.

Reys, R.E., Lindquist, M., Lambdin, D.V., & Smith, N.L. (2012). Helping children learn mathematics (10th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.