WAYNESBORO – A total of 109 juniors and seniors at Waynesboro Area Senior High School participated in the semi-annual Financial Literacy Day sponsored by the Rotary Club of Waynesboro earlier this month.
“As they approach graduation, our learners need to see and hear what is involved in managing their money,” said Supertintendent Rita Sterner-Hine, who also participated as a volunteer. “What our Rotary Club offers complements and extends what we do in our finance curriculum for a broad range of young people about to go out on their own, whether to college or vocational training or directly into the workforce.”
“This all-day activity is divided into two parts,” according to outgoing club activity chair Dan DeDona. “This year roughly 55 of the group participated in a budget building activity in the morning while the other 54 participated in a series of four games with a financial twist. In the afternoon the two groups switched.”
“Learners stay very busy throughout the day,” according to Kegan Crider, who, with Eda Gjikuria, handled all the arrangements inside the school. This included making rooms available by rescheduling existing classes, printing material for all activities and rearranging tables and chairs to suit different activities. The school even provided coffee and pastries in the morning, and soup and sandwiches for lunch.
“We get feedback from students in the days after each Literacy Day” according to Dr Gjikuria. “As usual, learners have preferences for either games or budget building, but they all agree this is a valuable experience.”
The four games are played eight times during the day and include:
• Financial Jenga: A variation on Jenga where successfully pulling numbered wooden blocks from a stack allows student teams to gather points by answering financial questions. Rotarian Pete Holdaway and F&M volunteer Evelyn Farnsworth acted as masters of ceremony.
• The Game of Life: “This is the same game most of us played as kids,” according to game manager Brian Shook. “We modify it to address financial issues, and to fit into a 30-minute time period.” Shook’s team included Rotarians Chastity Wantz and Jon Fleagle, and Rick Mouer of Waynesboro Design.
• Price is Wrong: This game divides learners into teams who must match common items purchased at stores with the appropriate price. Rotarians Pat Fleagle and Joe Stewart managed the game.
• Insurance Jeopardy: Like Jeopardy on TV, contestants choose from six categories of personal insurance to answer questions worth from $100 to $500 play dollars (which also serve as points). The difference is each group is divided into three teams. Blue Ridge Risk Partners Katie Clutz and Rotarian Jeb Keller acted as the MCs, and Maddie Riford handled the software and scoring.
Jeopardy made its first appearance this year with a new laptop computer and new software tailored to be run eight times all day with different learners. “We really needed to move to a new laptop and software. Both were over 10 years old, and there was no telling when either would give up the ghost,” according to DeDona. “It was a bit of a challenge to marry everything up to duplicate the learners’ experience and make sure everyone on the Jeopardy team was comfortable with the changes. Rotarian Mike Cermak of Cermak Technologies did such a good job, no one noticed much difference.”
The Budget Builder portion of the day also needed to be rewritten. “The material we were using dated back the same 10 years” said DeDona. “You can’t find cars priced like we had in our material, and no one knows what DSL is in the streaming age.”
“We had a four-person team of Bruce Neterer, Lori Depies, Bob Allison and I working on the complete rewrite for two cycles of Fin Lit. After all that, even our more experienced Budget Builder people found only one mistake,” he said.
Budget Builder was conducted this time by 10 instructors from Edward Jones, Sterling Financial, Coldwell Banker Homes, Primerica, Prudential, 1st Ed Credit Union and the school district. “This is always a tough one because it takes a lot of instructors to keep the number of learners down to manageable size,” said incoming activity chair Bruce Neterer.
“Fortunately, we get a lot of support from people in the community who share the club’s notion that young adults need to know what they’re getting into before the graduation hats fly. We start two months in advance, contacting a lot of people to see if they can block their calendars for a whole day. The positive response each year is very gratifying.”
At the end of the day, game winning teams received gift certificates arranged by Rotarian Bill Kohler of Mainstreet Waynesboro and provided by McDonalds, Domino’s Pizza, Hardee’s and Sheets of Waynesboro. There is also a “pop quiz” at the very end with movie tickets for Waynesboro Theatre awarded for correct answers.
“One of the Rotary Club of Waynesboro’s major focus areas is youth support,” said Matt Gunder, this year’s club president. ‘We feel that every effort to help youth in our community, whether through Toys for Children, Read Across America, Dictionaries for Third Graders, Abraxas Christmas Books and others, makes our community stronger and more durable.”
The Rotary Club of Waynesboro is a service organization supporting the local community for over 100 years. They meet at the Waynesboro Country Club every Tuesday at noon. For more information, see rotaryclubofwaynesboro.org or email [email protected].
