Photo Contributed by CNEA common theme emerged when high school seniors at the Chattanooga School for the Arts & Sciences recently took part in Reality Check, a financial literacy program of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce.
“This is hilarious. They want to put their spouse to work,” laughed Nicole Brown, a communications professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who was one of the volunteers who helped bring the Reality Check event to the K-12 magnet school.
Brown was at the “You Need a Job” table in the upper school’s library. It was one of a number of stations where seniors – who were given a pretend life situation such as low-paid single mom or highly paid engineer – stopped by to take on the multiple, financial burdens and opportunities of grown-up life.
Tables dealt with such real-life expenses as grocery shopping, insurance, banking and real estate. Plus, students had to visit a table called “That’s Life,” where participants had to pick from a stack cards that dealt out such unexpected expenses as a car break-down.
Students’ faces light up with understanding – and even appreciation for their parents – as they grapple with all the expenses that ordinary life entails, says Darian Scott, an outreach coordinator at the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, which offers the Reality Check program to all of Hamilton County’s public high schools.