"Who's your boss?" "No I mean who's the CEO of your company?"
"Who's your boss?" "No, I mean who is the president or CEO of your company?" "How do you make people come to your company?"
These are the questions I got from my third grade class at the end of our five sessions on "Our City", part of the 3rd annual REALTORS in the Classroom last week. I love volunteering because I get to work with kids - they are smart, and ask questions that are sometimes so precocious it tickles me.
This particular class of third graders had a hard time grasping that I didn't have a boss. That is, in a nutshell, why I and my CRS colleagues in Southern Nevada started recruiting other local REALTORS two years ago to volunteer.
Junior Achievement (JA) has been around for decades and spans the entire country, and it does many different things for the kids. The "JA in a Day" program is a full day of mentoring elementary school kids on five lessons, depending on the grade level. Volunteers pick their grade level, prepare with the JA-created curriculum, and teach it to the kids. Teachers are in the classroom, but the volunteer runs the show. Topics like money, finance, jobs, city zoning, and even economics are taught in a grade appropriate manner. A short Q&A session where the volunteer can talk a bit about their own experience, followed by an activity and a game is usually how a lesson is structured.
One thing I noticed early on as a volunteer is that JA in a Day is amazing, but doesn't often have small business owners. It makes sense for JA because when you need to recruit volunteers to take over a whole school, it's easier to get a company to come and bring all their employees. Don't get me wrong, these volunteers are awesome and do a great job for the kids. But I know when I was growing up I didn't have any clue that I could own my own business, and I wanted to bring that knowledge to these kids.
When our CRS chapter, at the time, was looking for something different for our annual community involvement project, I proposed to go into schools and make a real impact instead of just raising money. We recruited other REALTORS (with or without CRS designation) in addition to affiliates, assistants, anyone related to real estate, and went to volunteer with JA.
Let's be clear - this is a big commitment for people in our industry - a training a few weeks before, 3-4 hours of prep time, and a full school day with the kids. And as a volunteer, you have to show up because a missing volunteer means a lot of really disappointed kids. But our REALTOR community is always excited to step up to the plate, and they always follow through, despite the constant distractions and emergencies we encounter in our business. We don't have no-shows and the kids love to hear about our adventures in entrepreneurship.
"You really don't have a boss?" …is not an uncommon expression from an elementary school kid. Most of the schools we work with are lower income, and sometimes a majority are single-parent households. The kids don't know that they can have control over their destinies as entrepreneurs. The fact that they can see flesh and blood people in front of them, including girls seeing successful women, is inspiring stuff.
We look forward to both our local board, state CRS, and other groups coming together to continue to expand the REALTORS in the Classroom program. We want the community to know how much REALTORS care, and we want the kids to know they can be their own CEO.
Originally published on ActiveRain, October 26, 2016.
