Junior Achievement of Southeastern Pennsylvania

To help provide students with the fundamentals of economic education, Junior Achievement?s elementary grades, middle grades, and high school programs offer a solid foundation of knowledge. Students learn business concepts and skills through age-appropriate kindergarten through twelfth-grade program experiences.

Through the foundation programs in Elementary Grades, students learn about their roles as individuals, consumers, and workers and they discover their individual economic roles and the roles of their families in the local economy. They also learn about responsibilities and opportunities within their economic community while they explore economic development, local businesses, and career opportunities. To help students expand their knowledge beyond the local economy, they learn about state and regional economies, businesses and economic resources, and business operations and economic issues in the United States.

For middle school students, practical problem-solving activities help these sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students develop the skills and attitudes they need for success. By reinforcing concepts and confidence, students use their creativity and critical thinking skills to explore various aspects of business through activities that reinforce economic concepts taught in social studies, career, and life skills electives.

Finally, to bring high school students into the world of business experience and to help them take the next step into undergraduate academic programs or the working world, Junior Achievement?s high school programs offer practice skills in the areas of entrepreneurship, workforce readiness and financial literacy.

Junior Achievement programs are scheduled with school administrators and educators to best coordinate with their school schedules and curriculums. Because Junior Achievement programs are based on a series of visits by volunteer consultants into classrooms, mentor relationships are established with caring adults who otherwise would not be able to share their time and talents with these children.

Using a prepared kit of sequential lesson guides, discussion points, activity materials, and follow-up discussion opportunities, volunteers visit the classroom at scheduled times and provide specific opportunities for the students to learn by doing. At each step, the volunteers stress the necessity for students to develop their personal levels of education, skills, and aptitudes, thereby enabling students to understand their potential for future success in the global economy.

The strength of Junior Achievement programming is that it provides a sophisticated approach to educating and inspiring young people, while respecting the talents, creativity, perspectives, and backgrounds of all individuals. In partnership with educators and business, Junior Achievement uses hands-on experiences to bring the real world to students, opening their minds to their potential.

It's not an easy task. But it's the kind of challenge that JA takes on with creative energy, fervor, and decisive action.

Throughout the 2008-2009 school year, Junior Achievement of Delaware Valley will serve more than 15,000 K-12 students in Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, Philadelphia and Delaware Counties.