Econ students pay it forward
Starr’s Mill students in Walt Ellison’s economics class donated money to Georgia Council on Economic Education, a non-profit organization based in Atlanta. The donated money will help economics teachers across Georgia receive training, support, and activities to take back to their classrooms and improve economics education around the state.
November 30, 2017
After Thanksgiving, there was Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. On Tuesday, it was Giving Tuesday also known as Georgia Gives Day. On this day, Starr’s Mill economics classes donated a total of $503.36 to the Georgia Council on Economic Education as a way of giving back.
“The Georgia Council on Economic Education is extremely grateful for the support of the Starr’s Mill student body,” GCEE Executive Director Mike Raymer said. “All of the money they donated will be used to help teachers teach students just like them all across Georgia. Their giving will go a long way in making Georgia a better place to live, work, and do business.”
GCEE, a nonprofit organization based in Atlanta, uses their resources to improve the instruction of economics in Georgia. The organization hosts several workshops around Georgia for economics teachers to attend and have activities to bring back to the classrooms.
“When you realize what we as teachers get from this group you would think, man everybody should go. I mean any teacher that teaches some branch of economics, no matter what grade level, should get plugged into these workshops,” Ellison said. “It’s amazing how many workshops [GCEE] put on a semester [and] how many teachers they impact a semester.”
To support and to give back to GCEE, economics teachers decided to offer coffees in the classrooms as a way of raising money. The idea came from economics teachers Mark DeCourcy and Walt Ellison who told their students about GCEE and the fun, hands-on activities GCEE provides.
“We had kids who don’t drink coffee and don’t drink hot chocolate but were giving $5 and $10 because they thought, ‘Hey, this is something that’s important’,” Ellison said.
Starr’s Mill is already plugged into GCEE’s programs, and the economics teachers here attend the workshops. However, there are students in the state of Georgia whose teachers are unable to go to these workshops. Therefore, the money that was donated on Tuesday will help pay for those teachers to go and for the students of the teachers to benefit afterward.
