Entrepreneurship and Noonan Elementary Academy

The Junior Achievement program partnered with local Illinois Tool Works and Noonan Academy in Mokena, to help educate the students at Noonan about entrepreneurship. While kindergartners learned about work readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy through stories and activities that helped instill the values of earning, saving, sharing and working ethically, those in first grade learned to recognize the difference between a want and a need as a crucial lesson in financial literacy. This was done by illustrating the roles people play in their local economy and the importance of work and the tools and skills needed to earn what they want. Second graders at Noonan Academy learned about the interdependent roles of workers in their community by the work they perform and how communities function by role playing as donut shop owners. Not only did they have to buy supplies to make their product but, their product had to meet qualities of being sell-able. Third graders learned about financial literacy regarding the characteristics of a city and how people and business manage their money by studying the relationship between the jobs people perform, the skills they need to perform these jobs and the impact their work has on the city’s well-being. Fifth graders learned about the concept of business globalization as it relates to business resources and careers and the need for students to be entrepreneurial in their thinking. Those in sixth and seventh grade learned about economic success, personal finance, how skills, interested, values and education affect career options, in addition to global economy and what it means to think and act like an entrepreneur.