Junior Achievement, Grand Rapids

When Jeff Dornoff stepped through the doorway of Chrissy Henschell’s 6th grade class at Southeast Academic Center, he was greeted by a rambunctious group of kids.  So rambunctious, in fact, that Jeff wasn’t sure they’d be all that interested in settling down to study the “Our World” curriculum that Junior Achievement had provided him with.

One thing was clear.  If he was going to teach the class the fundamentals of world economics, he’d need to get their attention.  And fast.  So, he immediately began delving into what he considered to be fascinating subject matter, giving the kids a taste of what they’d be learning about in the next few weeks.

When he started explaining terms such as resources, trade, import and export, he saw the students’ eyes begin to glaze over.  He suddenly realized that to these inner-city kids, the global economy wasn’t real.  Most of them had never been outside the state, let alone outside the country.  He needed them to connect with the material on a personal level.

“You know, I know about this stuff, because I used to live in Japan.” 

Silence.  And suddenly, every hand in the room went up.

“Can you speak Japanese?”

“Why did you go there?”

“What’s the food like?”

Jeff couldn’t have gotten their attention any quicker if he’d told them that before he worked at Alticor, he was an astronaut that took regular trips to the moon.  The very idea that someone who lived such an exciting life was taking time out of his schedule to teach their class was a thrill.

Jeff used the Japan connection to keep the kids motivated to learn about world trade.  Every week after they’d worked through their lesson, Jeff answered questions about his time in Japan.  These questions opened a window to a world the kids had never dreamed of… a place where you could go anywhere, do anything.  Not on vacation, but as a job. 

Jeff was surprised to find that kids who were initially not at all interested in his subject matter couldn’t wait for his next visit.  And neither could he.

As the end of his Junior Achievement assignment drew near, Jeff decided that he wanted to leave the class with something more than the standard Junior Achievement certificate to remember him by.  He printed out each of the students’ names in Japanese, and handed them out at the end of his last session.

As delighted as the kids were with their laminated name cards, they were even more excited when they presented Jeff with his thank you card.  They’d researched Japanese characters on the internet, and included some on his card.  Touched by their thoughtfulness, Jeff returned to his office, where he hung the card in a prominent position. 

As he translated the characters, it became clear that the most important thing he had taught the students had nothing to do with trade, resources, imports or exports.  Somehow, during his series of lessons on world economics, the children had learned something more.   That the world was not quite as big as they thought, that it was within their reach.  And that the person who taught them about it genuinely cared about them, enough to come back every week, just as he said he would. 

The characters on the card didn’t read Junior Achievement or World Trade, but “permanent friendship.”  It still hangs on Jeff’s wall today, a reminder that while he set out to share his knowledge with students, they in turn taught him a lesson he will never forget.