Andrew O’Neal thought he was safe.
The eighth-grade Columbus Middle School student was part of a gaggle of children around Cory Lucius in the school gymnasium. Lucius, who works with Shelter Insurance in Starkville, wandered around the gym picking out students at random from the 100 or so in attendance bestowing bad news upon them as they worked their way through the “Game of Life.”
O’Neal’s friend had just discovered, courtesy of Lucius, that he had children. Eager to spread the misery, he begged Lucius to inflict some disaster onto O’Neal.
“I can’t have kids,” O’Neal said with a confident smile. “I’m single.”
Lucius had other thoughts. He took the sheet of paper from O’Neal’s hand, and with a few strokes of a marker, told him he was now married and had a child. But that wasn’t all.
“Oh, and by the way,” Lucius said, scribbling another line on O’Neal’s sheet, “your kid just broke his leg.”
Such were the up-and-down fortunes of CMS eighth-graders in the Game of Life. The game, presented by the Golden Triangle Leadership group, assigned students a job, housing, salary, education level and family size. Students then decided how to spend their money at stations that represented health care, a car dealership, the grocery store, college/career, housing and utilities.
Out of about 250 students — which divided into three groups that played the game — most saw salaries in the $25,000 to $65,000 range, with fewer students starting with $85,000 or $105,000. In each group, five students start the game unemployed, and had to immediately visit college/career booth to try to climb their way to better fortunes.
Along the way, a harbinger of chance — like Lucius — might change the students’ fortunes, for better or worse.
Decisions
O’Neal, who had drawn his lot as a truck driver making $65,000 per year, took the bad news in stride, even as the costs of medical treatment and having to find a larger home mounted. In all, the developments forced him to pay an extra $9,000 on housing, as his larger family necessitated a move from his two-bedroom apartment costing $5,000 per year to a three-bedroom home in the suburbs that cost $14,000 per year.
His biggest takeaway, though, was an appreciation for buying health insurance, after learning the broken leg that would have cost $1,000 uninsured only cost $100.
“I’m glad I got that insurance,” he said. “If I hadn’t, the bill on my kid would have been a lot more.”
Lucius said that was the entire point of his role in the project.
“My job was to throw some curveballs at the kids and hopefully get them to think about the decisions they’re making based on the obstacles that could happen in their lives,” said Lucious, one of a handful in the Leadership group assigned as “floaters” Wednesday, doling out everything from children, medical issues, car trouble and broken cell phones to scholarships and inheritances.
Christina Beddies, an eighth-grade teacher at CMS, said she thought Wednesday’s demonstration served as a welcome reality-check to get students thinking about some of the things that come with being an adult.
“I think it really shows them some of the things they may not think about on a regular basis — about having to go to the doctor or all of the different unexpected things that may arise. I think that watching some of them move from wanting a nice car to having to pay doctor bills and really wanting to prioritize — I think that makes a huge difference.”
Beddies also noted the eighth-graders ages, in beginning to transition into being young adults, made them ripe for the game’s lessons.
“A lot of them are starting to look at things like careers,” Beddies said. “Middle school age is interesting because they are still kids, but they really are becoming their own independent person where they’re going to have to start looking at more adult decisions.”
Leadership program
The Leadership program, a group of 25 business leaders from Clay, Lowndes and Oktibbeha counties, has worked on the service project since October. Columbus-Lowndes Chamber of Commerce President Lisa James said the group selected the “Game of Life” as its service project, which it will also present at Caledonia on March 30.
James said the project is special because it teaches young students to consider the weigh real-world decisions carry.
“It definitely introduces them to the concept of consequences,” James said. “If you go to the insurance booth and decide not to get insurance, then you have to go to the medical station and have a $5,000 bill — you could have had a $100 bill.”
Matt Seawright, a banker with BankFirst who manned the college/career booth, came away from Wednesday’s second morning session impressed with the CMS students.
Students had to answer math or English questions in order to increase their educational attainment level, with higher levels requiring harder questions. The booth was consistently crowded with students throughout each hour-long session, and Seawright said almost all of them wanted to improve.
“Of all the kids we’ve seen so far today, only three haven’t tried to move up,” he said.
Seawright also said he was happy to see the students learning early the importance of budgeting.
“A budget is the most important thing that you will learn to do, because if you don’t have any money, you don’t eat,” he said. “You don’t go out. You don’t get gas. You don’t do anything.”
Zack Plair, managing editor for The Dispatch, along with Palmer Home’s Emily Ferril, spearheaded this year’s Golden Triangle Leadership service project.
Plair said he thinks the experience will resonate with the students.
“We’re hoping that maybe in the future, when faced with one of these situations for real, or if they see a family member facing it, something they learned here will come back to them,” he said. “I also thought it was very telling how eager all these students were to flock to the college and career booth to pay to improve their circumstances. I hope that might lead them to more highly regard the educational opportunity they now get every day for free.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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