Reality Town

Thursday November 13th was Reality Town at Valley Junior High. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this activity I will explain. Our Reality Town is for the 9th graders. They are assigned careers based on their GPA at the time we submit our information to the Reality Town company. Along with their career each student is given information about their "life," such as how many children they have, if they are married, if their spouse works, if they own a car, etc. They are then given a checkbook which they use to write checks to pay for housing, transportation, groceries, clothing, child care, insurance, pets, entertainment, etc. Those who chose to dress up for their career were given an extra $100 at the bank before the activity. It's a lot of fun! I love watching the kids and listening to their funny comments. One girl was a school counselor. At the end of the activity she came up to me and said, "Ms. White, how do you do it?" I got a good laugh out of that. :) I think Reality Town is a major eye-opener for the kids who take it seriously. I hope that they learn the value of a good education and hard work.

This student was a junior high school teacher, so he chose to dress up like our dear Mr. Gibbons.

I got to be at one of the banks, and because I'm such a nerd I loved it! I have a weird obsession with numbers and math...

WE LOVE VOLUNTEERS!

The counselors still look pretty good for being totally exhausted!

One funny story came from our last session of Reality Town. One of my students was an anesthesiologist and made over $8000 a month. He had managed to go to each booth and he still had a ton of money left. After he bought himself a second house and 3 cars he then started buying things for other people. Before we knew it he had bought his friend another car and a huge group of people cruises. He then started writing checks to random people who were out of money. I'm proud of his generosity. :)