For many parents, paying bills comes once a month.
For their 8th grader at Columbus Middle School, it comes once a year.
And that day was today.
CMS eighth-grade students participated in the Reality 101 workshop hosted by the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce on Friday where they were tasked with “adulting.”
“It’s their first exposure to a checkbook, to a budget,” Kara Asmus, the Chamber’s Drive for Five coordinator, said as dozens of students wandered through the tables. Asmus said this is the right time for it. “It’s a good age to begin that awareness of what it takes to be an adult.”
Before the workshop begins, students are randomly assigned a salary and a life situation (such as marital status and number of children), Asmus said.
A CMS 8th Grader gets her questions answered at the
vehicle station during Friday's Reality 101 workshop.
“Then they have to go shop for items as if they were an adult,” she said. “They need a house, they need insurance … a phone, healthcare ... all those things that go into a house.”
Representatives from Chamber of Commerce members took stations around the gym. “It’s an easy ask,” Asmus joked of finding volunteers. Stations included Insurance, Legal, Automotive and Charity Giving among many. Through out the afternoon, students are given real-life scenarios to navigate through. Those could be getting into a car accident, needing furniture or dealing with a medical issue.
According to Asmus, one cost in particular generates the biggest reaction.
“The childcare one is the shock and awe,” she said. “A child in the 8th grade has no idea what mom and dad are shelling out for childcare.”
See more photos from this afternoon on Facebook.