Slightly Off KIlter

I volunteered for Junior Achievement in November #151; five Tuesday, half an hour each, in a local second grade class. You can read the whys and wherefores in two parts in my regular weblog, Slightly Off Kilter (
Part 1 and Part 2). Activity 1 is here.

Nov. 9 was Junior Achievement Activity 2 – I thought it was an unmitigated disaster (OK, possibly mitigated by the kids having an uproarious good time). I wouldn’t be surprised if the teacher is thoroughly sick of both me and Junior Achievement. If I thought I was curtly dismissed last week it was nothing like this week.

So – what was wrong? What _wasn’t_ wrong!

First, the “program” is called “My Community”. The activity is about Unit Production and Assembly Line production. What do these have to do with “My Community”?
Next, the vocabulary is not second grade material – Unit, Product, Assemble. What’s wrong with “One thing”, “A thing you make”, “Make or put together”? I got a lot of blank stares. The only word any of them thought they knew was unit (one kid knew that one).

Then we take these big fancy words and put them together to make “Unit Production” and “Assembly Line Production”. Sure…

The there are the problems with the materials. The “eggs”, “milk”, and “flour” are all circular, black and white stickers, the same size, not easy to distinguish from each other. The flour is pictured in a bag, the milk in a carton, the eggs in their shells in a bowl. Any kid knows you don’t use a bag of flour, a carton of milk, and a dozen unshelled eggs to make _one donut_.
Then there’s the concept of a “defect”. They got that. They got that quite well. But seven-year-olds are very literal minded. I asked, “What kinds of defects could be in these donuts?” They suggested:

• they only have one side (true)


• they aren’t cooked (true)


• they’re made out of paper (true)

There were two or three more answers, all perfectly acceptable reasons why these weren’t good _donuts_ But they had some trouble with “what makes a defect in a _paper_ donut”.
Back to the materials, the perforated paper donuts are difficult for an adult to punch out of the sheets. They were nearly impossible for a 7-yr-old.

There were 60 donut sheets (6 donuts per sheet) in the kit. Assuming a 30-student class, that’s 2 sheets (12 donuts) per kid. These kids had difficulty doing 3 donuts in two minutes. Nobody got to 6, let alone needed a second sheet.
Then there was the matter of the 2-minute timed experiment in (take your pick) Assembly Line or Unit production. Here we have kids with two equal goals – do a good job and do it fast. That doesn’t work when you’re seven and it doesn’t work at all in 2 minutes.
The assembly line was a disaster. Seven year olds help each other. They’re taught to help each other. Also, in a real assembly line, the people have training in what they’re supposed to do. These kids didn’t have experience and the instructions didn’t make sense.

The most interesting thing I learned was from one table where one girl took on the role of “line boss” and directed her classmates in donut production. (The activity planners hadn’t thought to assign a “line boss”.)

When asked “Which was easier? Which made more donuts?” the answer was clear – unit production wins, hands down. It was more fun. There were more donuts. One girl said she didn’t like the assembly line because she didn’t get to punch out any donuts.

I’m sure the economists and researchers would be interested to know that assembly line production doesn’t work… at least not in second grade.
By the time the period was over the teacher was gathering up the materials pretty much by force. “That’s enough. Put that down. Give me those. You’re done, you’re done, we’re finished.” I don’t blame her. I turned her class into an uproar. Was it my fault? Is there anything I could have done differently?

If I had realized what was going to happen I could have done the “experiments in donut production” with fewer kids… but isn’t the point of the exercise to involve all of the kids?

Unfortunately, while half of the room is “making donuts” (5 kids to a team, each team supervised by either volunteer or teacher) that leaves 10 kids with _nothing to do but watch_. And by the time their turn comes, it’s a competition _and_ the first 10 kids, who just had their donuts taken away, now have Nothing To Do But Watch.

And this is only Second Grade. Hoo boy. What’s wrong with the people who put this activity together? What were they Thinking?, Did they test these activities or materials? Didn’t they get feedback? JA claims that all of the materials have been tested by teachers and volunteers. OK, but… were they tested by _children_? Were the volunteers and teachers either too polite or too intimidated to be honest?
Rich suggests I call the school and leave a message for the teacher, asking if she would like to get together before next Tuesday to go over the next activities and see if there are any potholes we can see beforehand. It’s worth a try. And if she wants to wash her hands of Junior Achievement, I won’t blame her!

Looking ahead, I think next week doesn’t look too bad (although I think we can cut _way_ back on the whole “pay the employees and then tax them” thing. Maybe we can do that with fewer kids. I can take “volunteers”.

The week after that is money and there’s a game with passing a quarter as a song plays. Right. Perhaps I will read the song and we will pass the quarter from table to table.

The last week is the Mayors and the Businesses and the Decision Tree. Perhaps if we brainstorm as a group and then vote instead of doing the small group activity, maybe it will work.