It’s early Tuesday morning at Maple Ridge Elementary, and the class is ready to get down to business.

Real business.

The eager students are preparing for their first hands-on lesson in mass production, and how it can influence profit and quality control.

Their assignment: to assemble units in a make-believe “pen factory” using a variety of methods.

Chris Wood, Business Edge
Volunteer instructor Dianne Quinton of TELUS loves going into the classroom.

Will it be faster in an assembly line? Or should just one student put together the pen components to ensure quality?

The students buzz with anticipation. A hand pops up from the back of the classroom with a breathless question that best captures the bottom line of pen-making economics.

“Do we get to keep the pens?”

When volunteer instructor Dianne Quinton nods yes, the class erupts. “Yay!” And so their “working” day begins, another phase in the process of building stronger links between business and education in Alberta.

Quinton, a business readiness leader with TELUS in Calgary, is teaching lesson No. 3 in a four-part series called Business Basics, a program is designed to introduce elementary-aged students to basic principles of business, including production, organization, management and careers, and marketing.

Before the end of the hour, the students will learn that mass production using an assembly line, versus unit production, is a superior method to increase the output of pens.

The winning team will assemble, build and test nine pens in a 60 second time frame.

February is Junior Achievement Month, and chapters across the country are celebrating the many successes of the international non-profit organization’s history in Canada.

U.S. industrialist Horace Moses started the group in 1919 in Springfield, Mass., for city high school students as a comparable program to the 4-H farming program for rural teens. It spread to British Columbia in 1955, and moved into Alberta in 1959.

The national office was established in 1967, and its network of 32 chartered offices has reached an estimated 1.2 million young Canadians in about 400 communities. A volunteer base of 11,000 people helps deliver programs to elementary, junior high and high school students.

JA is perhaps better known for its programs which help older students set up their own companies or teach them about entrepreneurship, workforce readiness skills, or the economics of staying in school.

But it is in the early years, where many youngsters are beginning to learn about the free-enterprise system, that JA feels it can make a big difference.

“Kids need to be taught at a young age what business is all about. The earlier you reach kids, the better impression you’re able to make on them that business is good,” says Jay Ball, vice-president of Junior Achievement of Northern Alberta, the largest geographic chapter in the country which also covers the Northwest Territories.

“At an elementary level, JA provides something that isn’t provided anywhere else through other curriculum.”

Quinton has visited teacher Bob Sleno’s class at Maple Ridge elementary in southeast Calgary for seven years.

She first heard about the volunteer opportunity through her internal office communications.

“I think there’s a lot that goes on around that age about thinking about the future,” says Quinton, a JA volunteer for nearly 10 years.

“It gets them thinking about some of the things they need to understand before they undertake any type of initiative.”

Junior Achievement of Southern Alberta, based in Calgary, runs about 200 Business Basics programs every year for Grade 5 and 6 students, in public and separate schools south of Red Deer. In Edmonton and points north, 95 classes will reached an estimated 2,375 students this year.

Cathy Millar, manager of program resource development for JA in Calgary, says the program initially began as a way to introduce high school students to sound business practices and real-world economics.

“That’s where our roots are,” she says. “But it eventually filtered down to the junior high and elementary level because there were requests from parents and teachers who wanted the younger kids to understand how business runs our economy.”

Business Basics sessions are designed to integrate seamlessly with elementary school curriculum, to be delivered by active members of the local business community. “It’s not the teacher passing along second-hand knowledge. This comes from somebody actively working in the business world themselves,” adds Millar.

Now, a new initiative is under way across Canada to introduce business studies to even younger pupils.

A national committee is studying the feasibility of developing age-appropriate Canadian curriculum for children in Grades 3 to 4, and eventually, even the lower grades. It’s already a reality in the United States, where JA offers a full K-12 roster of programs.

But like everything, Business Basics and other Junior Achievement programs cost money – and local chapters face yearly challenges in both fund-raising and attracting enough volunteer instructors.

According to the organization, supporting JA programs allows investors “to help shape the educational programs that will ultimately yield future generations of employees, suppliers and consumers.”

Many companies appear to agree. Dow Chemicals recently contributed $44,500 to the Business Basics program in Fort Saskatchewan, Sherwood Park and the Elk Island School District. “They want to reach more kids in their own area than they ever have before,” adds Ball.

“And they wanted to reach kids at an earlier age.”

Other sponsors of the programs include major corporations like EPCOR, Shell Canada, IBM, ATCO Gas, Suncor and Petro-Canada. Many of these corporations, like TELUS, also encourage employees to volunteer.

For those who do, like Quinton, it all comes down to a feeling of giving something back, of opening a window to the future for young minds.

“I love kids, and I feel that their learning is very important,” she says.

“So many of them have very definite ideas of what they want to be or do. I think it’s kind of neat to hear from them what their ideas are . . . and I’m often surprised what they come up with.”

Web Watch:
www.jasouthalberta.org
www.janorthalberta.org