Junior Achievement - Teaching Financial Literacy

Bill Coderre, President and CEO of Junior Achievement of the Great Lakes joins us to discuss programs to help teach kids financial literacy to shape Michigan's economic future. 

More information can be found here: https://michigangreatlakes.ja.org/programs/ja-personal-finance-2-0

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Spen a while since you've heard about Junior Achievement. Listen up.
What they're doing with financial literacy changes the course sometimes
of a kid. I think we were better at this
in the old days. This is West Michigan's Morning News
Steve Kelly, Bill codeers with US President and CEO of
Junior Achievement of the Great Legs. Bill, thank you for

(00:23):
coming all the way downtown this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
I think back in the when I was coming up.
I don't know our parents did a better job of
giving us the past book for our savings account when
we were just little kids, and we followed this sort
of thing. But financial literacy is a big deal. Talk
to us a little bit about the difference you guys
are making.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
It truly is well. Junior Achievement takes a holistic approach
at financial literacy and really begins teaching it as early
as kindergotten and each year till they get to high school.
There's sequential programming that really allows students to embrace financial literacy,

(01:03):
understand how it impacts the quality of their lives today
and tomorrow. And one of the things we're really trying
to do is give young people the skill set and
the mindset to build thriving local communities right here in Michigan.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
So talk to us about getting involved, getting in on
the ground floor. If you're a parent, grandparent of a child,
why aren't they involved in JA right now?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Certainly here in West Michigan, we serve over fifty one
thousand students with Junior Achievement programs and the programs are
decided by the local school administration. So we're going to
integrate junior achievement into our curriculum. Or it might be

(01:51):
a particular teacher that has an affinity for an experiential
learning opportunity for their students and the parents. Guardians should
talk to their their teachers and their administrators. Is their
junior achievement in our school system? And if not, you know,
can we have junior achievement?

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Reading about compound interest in a book is boring and
I didn't learn it right. But you do this hands
on thing and have this place right this learning park
where you actually visually take part with this thing. So
talk to us about that comparing.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Certainly, so, in addition to our in school programs, Junior
Achievement has the experiential learning center that has three programs.
The Tom Fox Family Jabistown, which is for fourth, fifth
and sixth graders. It's an actual town. The students do

(02:53):
eight to twenty lessons at school. They then apply for
jobs and then they come to the facility for a
one day culminating experience where they're an associate in a business,
which therefore they get paid twice. They have a checkbook
and a debit card, so they're consumers, and then they're

(03:14):
also citizens, so they make the laws for Jabiztown, they
elect the mayor. It's a complete economy in this huge facility.
And then on the other hand, when you get to
middle school. In high school, we have Ja Finance Park,

(03:34):
the Carl and Susan Haskel Ja Finance Park, and it
literally looks like a mall and every mall store is
a life decision, housing, transportation, childcare, savings, groceries, and the
students same thing. Eight to twenty lessons at school. They

(03:54):
then come to the facility, they're assigned a position and
they try to build the family budget. What's amazing is
three years ago the state past new financial literacy requirement,
so high school students now have to take a semester

(04:14):
of financial literacy programming in order to graduate, and Junior
Achievement offers three programs at the high school level that
meet those requirements. So we're out there working with educators
and have a turnkey, high quality solution for them to

(04:35):
meet these new standards.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Ask about it at your school. Bill Kdears, the President
and CEO of Junior Achievement of the Great Lakes, great stuff.
Thank you for coming in

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Oh, thank you for having me.