Recognize Your Audience...

Today was Junior Achievement Day at school.

Junior Achievement is an organization that is a partnership between the business community, volunteers, and schools. Volunteers for Junior Achievement go to schools and discuss key concepts of work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy to young people all over the world. Sounds cool, ey?

Well...in reality, what happened was that a middle-aged white man came and spent 3 hours talking to 20 Black 7th grade girls about the global marketplace. I was like, wow...the global marketplace? Really? No, REALLY??? Most of these girls have never been outside of Decatur, Georgia...this should be good...

He started out by asking, "How many countries do you think there are in the world?" One girl shouted, "Fifty!"

**I thought, ummm...naw, that's states, not countries.**

The speaker replied, "No, more than that..."

Another girl yelled, "A million!" **I tried not to giggle at this point** After a few more crazy numbers were thrown out there, the speaker, clearly flustered at this point, finally told them the number (900+), and began his pitch. He was using words like "embargo", "tariff", and "subsidy"...completely outside of my girls vocabulary. I began to see their eyes glaze over...

Next, he discussed imports and exports..."What country do you think exports the most goods to the United States?" "Africa!" "Europe!"

After he finally told them the answer (which was Canada, by the way), a sidebar discussion began about how that COULD NOT be true because of all of the items that are "Made In China".

Then the speaker moved on to immigration - "Are any of you from another country?"
One girl raised her hand and said, "I used to live in New Jersey."

And so it went... About an hour in, I had to remove one of my more "rambunctious" students. She began moaning about being bored...putting her feet up on the desk, walking around, talking, combing her hair, completely ignoring the speaker. I had the assistant principal remove her - my student expressed her displeasure by slamming the door shut on her way out of the room.

I just shook my head throughout the entire presentation. I'm sure that the global marketplace presentation is a big hit at some middle schools...but not at mine. The entire topic was completely over their heads and outside of reality for them. The only "marketplace" these girls know or care to know about is South Dekalb Mall. I felt bad for the speaker, who took time out of his busy schedule to volunteer - his intentions were good...

The morning was supposed to be similar to a Career Day, but I doubt that any of my students really benefited from the activity. I'm hoping that there will be a less structured career day event later in the year, where the students are able to learn about potential jobs and ask the speakers questions.

I'm not in any way "knocking" Junior Achievement - I actually enjoyed the presentation, personally. But really...you've got to know your audience, and my girls were NOT the ones for a 3 hour lecture on the global marketplace.

I'm jes sayin!!

P.S. I promise my next blog is not going to be about my students!!!