"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark."
-Michelangelo-
Mar 8, 2010, JA Biztown
Our JA Biztown team has done four lessons so far in Mrs. Perkins 6th grade classroom. On Tuesday, the students learned about Free Enterprise, which is what SIFE is all about. The students worked in team to make products out of construction paper, staples and scissors. The students then presented them to the class along with how much they would cost. The 6th graders creativity know no bounds and they had some great products. On Thursday, the students filled out their JA Biztown bank application. For the next week, they will learn how a checking account works and begin the process of applying for a JA Biztown job!
-Laura Ferguson
Mar 8, 2010, Kids Bank
Kids Bank has been traveling to Osceola to implement our program in the fifth-grade classrooms there. This school has 4 classrooms and 24 students in each. We have taught lessons about savings accounts, checking accounts and credit. The students have been playing PayDay, Bingo and participating in stations where they can practice their new skills. One of our SIFE goals is to include ethics into every project. Kids Bank has been doing this by introducing “ethical” as a new vocabulary word and having conversations about what it means to be ethical. On Monday, several students were so unfamiliar with the word “ethical” that they could not even pronounce it. Now those same students are able to give examples of an ethical situation. One student said, “If you are at the grocery store and the person gives you back too much change, you need to give the extra money back and not keep it.”
We hope that we can also help the students open savings account at the local banks. This week we have talked about some things they would like to buy and that have a lot of saving to do!
-Laura Ferguson
Mar 5, 2010, SIFE Spirit Video
The past couple weeks have been very intense and exiting for our SIFE team while we start to prepare for competition. Yesterday during our SIFE class we created a video we will be submitting to the the SIFE spirit video contest at nationals in MN. Our visual design team came up with a very exciting idea for our video and it got our team very pumped up. I don't want to give the video away, but while there was a lot of cheering and excitement we were able to give our Sam Walton Fellow a little surprise at the end that created the most excitement of all. This activity allowed our SIFE team to come together and do a little bonding while showing others our enthusiasm we lead our team with each and every day. You will be able to view this video on our video link within the next few weeks.
-Loralyn Heath
Mar 4, 2010, Stock Market Simulation a Success!
Yesterday on March 3rd, 2010 the 2nd annual stock market simulation took place on our Iowa Campus with 50 high school students. Our team this year has been working very hard to implement this project and make it even bigger then when it was last year when it started in one rural IA high school class room. Our team has put in around 200 hours on this project between this semester and last, and we were finally able to see some of our results. We brought in one class from Lamoni High School, two classes from Central Decatur High School, and two classes from Mt. Ayr High School. The students participated in a couple of ice breakers, and then participated in the simulation game itself. We were very fortunate enough to have Donath Thappa and Anne Rajbhandari to create a database for us that allowed the students to play the game so successfully. The kids got really into it, and there were around 500 transactions throughout the four quarters of play. The top five winners
received a small Graceland University gift, and the students will be awaiting our next step in which we will combine the students' scores to see who will get the opportunity to travel to New York to the New York Stock Exchange with the Graceland SIFE team. We will also be giving out scholarships from Graceland University to the second place winners from each high school. Our partners Emory and Henry College in VA, are in the process of conducting their simulation, and our goal is to combine our results to show the impact of all the students we interacted with. Following the simulation, we will go back in the class room to help the students take the first step in saving and investing money. Thank you to all the SIFE students who stepped up and helped,and the Graceland University Staff.
-Loralyn Heath
Mar 1, 2010, Stock Market Simulation
Over the past couple of weeks, the Stock Market Simulation team has been working around the clock to make sure that they are prepared for this weeks Stock Market Simulation. We have been going into Mt. Ayr High School, Lamoni High School and Central Decatur High School to teach juniors and seniors about the importance of investing. The students have been very receptive and have asked many good questions about the stock market. This is going to be a very busy week, as the students are coming to Graceland for a mock Stock Market Simulation and a winner from each school will be awarded a trip to New York to visit the New York Stock Exchange.
Feb 26, 2010, A Busy Week
This past week has been a very busy one for Graceland SIFE! The Stock Market Simulation Team went into class rooms in Mt. Ayr,
While the Waste Audits team took a trip down to Blue Springs to preform a waste audit at a school there.
Today the Pick up the PACE team went to the PACE center in Des Moines to teach a lesson there.
Meanwhile back on campus Leadership Council is busy working on this year's script for competition!
All in all it has been a great and busy week and we're really excited to see all of the results to come.
The Once A Month Cooking team is made up of five SIFE students, Taylor Johnson, Joy Jamerson,Jenny Jackson, Ben Anderson and Eric Van Kuiken. We are very excited about the Once A Month Cooking group this semester because we are expanding it out into many other communities.What we are working on right now is a OAMC Guide Book which is a step-by-step process of how other communities can get Once a Month Cooking started on their own. This will help to expand this great project outward to create the a "ripple of light effect."
-Taylor Johnson
Feb 23, 2010, JA Biztown Update
The JA Biztown began their lessons in the Lamoni 6th grade classroom with great success! Today the students learned about what a community is and became offical citzens of JA Biztown by reciting the Biztown Pledge. For the next eights weeks our team will be in the classroom every Tuesday and Thursday to prepare the students for their time at JA Biztown. The students are full of questions and excited for the opportuntiy to learn how a community works. We are excited about the future of this project! Please feel free to visit our project page for more information.
-Laura Ferguson
Feb 19, 2010, Graceland University Entrepreneurial Roundtable 2009
Graceland University is Hosting the 18th Annual Entrepreneurial Roundtable on the Lamoni Campus on April 9th, 2009
Feb 17, 2010, Business Advisory Board Conference Call
On Wednesday, February 10th, Graceland SIFE Leadership Council had a conference call with our Business Advisory Board. The topics for discussion were the Winter term trips taken in January (Belize and Zambia). Kirk Tabor and Nikky Closson spoke about their wonderful adventures in Zambia and I explained the awesome events of Belize. After discussing Winter term, we discussed the new projects that have been created this semester and looked for their feedback on how to make these projects great successes. We would like to say thanks to all those members that were available for the call and hope those that were not available will be for the call next month.
--Jen Abraham
Feb 17, 2010, Pick up the PACE
The GU SIFE Pick Up the PACE team is ecstatic about our goals to accomplish this semester. We are going back to PACE juvenile facility on Thursday, February 18th to teach about budgeting and the possibilities of going to college and furthering education. We are hoping to greatly expand this project this semester by partnering with other SIFE teams across the United States. We have made contacts in the Blue Springs and Independence school districts and we hope to work in alternative schools in their areas in order to widen our scope for this project. Within the next few weeks we will be working very hard to finish creating the curriculum to provide to the other SIFE teams so they can have great success with this project. For those SIFE teams interested in receiving our curriculum, please contact us through our SIFE web page.
After another successful semester of Kid's Bank our goals are set high. We are planning on expanding our program and making a stronger impact on all the lives we encounter.
Kid's Bank will be teaching lessons to at least three more schools this semester, if not more. With stronger connections being made with surrounding banks it is helping to make the Kid's Bank program even stronger with a long lasting impression. With a list of goals set high we are planning to reach all of them. It is our hope to make our Kid's Bank program even larger with stronger, more interactive lessons that will involve all students. Kid's Bank is not only looking to spread our program to surrounding cities, but to partner with other SIFE teams and schools to spread the Kid's Bank program. Our main goal is to give young children information on saving, a savings account, and a sum of money to begin their savings account that otherwise might have not been possible. Helping young children learn main money saving concepts at a young age could affect their money management skills for the rest of their lives. Along with spreading our program we hope to open a scholarship fund that will someday be available to help students when they attend college.
Kid's Bank's goals are set high and we plan to achieve everything we can and more. It is going to be another exciting and successful semester for Kid's Bank.
-Courtenay McCanless
Feb 12, 2010, GU SIFE Spring 2010
Hello!
The Spring semester has started off with a bang. This semester we have 67 registered SIFE members spanning across 20+ different majors and 14 students are new members to our SIFE team! This semester we have 18 different projects and we are very excited to start preparing for Regionals in April.
The new presentation team is announced today so be sure to check back-- we're going to post the new team soon!!
-Nikky Closson
Jan 26, 2010, Spring 2010
Today was the first day of class for the 2010 Spring Semester.
The Graceland SIFE team had a semester kickoff meeting to discuss reasons to be involved in SIFE, introduce our SIFE staff and leadership council to the new members, and share some of the exciting Winterterm adventures.
We're really excited about this upcoming semester. April 8th is regionals, held in Chicago this year and GU SIFE is holding presentation team tryouts next Wednesday at 3 in the Heritage Chapel.
Please continue to check back for more GU SIFE updates. I will also be uploading some remaining Zambia blogs from Winterterm sometime this week!
Nikky Closson
Jan 19, 2010, Belize
Ahoy!
Today was another wonderful, warm day in Placencia. We went on a snorkeling excursion and had a lot of fun. Krista and Rhonda were in a bit of pain though because of their sunburns. We got to see a lot of really cool fish and underwater wildlife. Tara, Ryan and I even got to see some sea turtles, a stingray and a 4 foot nurse shark.
I’m very sad to say that this will be our last blog for the Belize team. We will be home on Thursday and are looking forward to seeing our family and friends but not the snow. Hello to the States on Thursday.
Jen Abraham
Jan 18, 2010, Belize
Hola from Placencia. We have made it to our beautiful home in Placencia.
On Saturday, we went to Mountain Pine Ridge. That is a correction from Pine Tree Ridge. We were mistaken on the name. We first went to Rio Frio Cave that we all hiked through. Some of us had a little more trouble than others (AKA me, who slipped off the rocks at the very beginning of the cave). Then we went to the Twin caves where Rhonda, Neal, Krista and I stayed out because it was very dark and scary. Neal and Rhonda were going to go but Neal saw a spider and they decided to stay behind and protect Krista and Me. Linda, Ryan, Tara, and Johnny Chuc (our guide from Kin Winik Jungle Tours) crawled down into the cave. Following the caves we went to Rio Frio pools, which were beautiful, and hiked up them without our guide. We were all feeling pretty impressed with ourselves for navigating through them until we got to a dead end and had to have the military men show us the way out. After hiking the pools we met up with Johnny and he took us to Big Rock Waterfall. He helped all of us get up close and personal with the waterfall. This was quite the excitement for Krista because she figured out she knows how to swim. He even helped save the life of a man that was not even with our group. He was quite the guide. By the end of the day we were all exhausted and ready for bed. Most of us were passed out before 10 P.M.
Sunday, we took a 3 hour car ride to Placencia. William stopped on the way so we could all put our feet in the sand before getting on the water taxi. We went and caught our water taxi and headed to our Decked Out House. There are decks surrounding our house that overlooks the water so we have enjoyed relaxing outside.
Today we all woke up at 7 A.M. because of the schedule we have gotten used to. We went and had breakfast at The Shak and laid on the beach. Some people got pretty burnt and we’re hoping they aren’t too miserable tomorrow. Rhonda said she wants to go back to Iowa to throw her body into a pile of snow because she is so sunburned.
Tomorrow we have an excursion to the barrier reef to do some snorkeling. We are all looking forward to it even though the water is a little bit cold. We will definitely take the cold water over cold weather.
Thank you for checking in with us. We will blog tomorrow after we go snorkeling so please check back.
