2022-23 Student Learning Experiences
What is JA?
Junior Achievement (JA) strives to improve the quality of life for all students by providing them with the economic and financial knowledge needed to transition into adulthood, bettering their futures, their community, and the world.
Aligning with Common Core State Standards and built around three core pillars: entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and work-readiness, JA provides volunteer-taught, interactive, grade-specific programs for students, K-12th grade, each with a series of lessons and reinforcing activities that require students to put their new knowledge to work immediately. Through these programs, JA helps prepare youth for the real world by showing them how to recognize the economic relevance of excelling in school, creating jobs that make their communities more robust, applying entrepreneurial thinking to the workplace, and how to generate income and effectively manage it.
JA's unique approach allows volunteers from the community to deliver curriculum while sharing their experiences with students. Embodying the heart of JA, volunteers transform the key concepts of JA's lessons into a message that inspires and empowers students to believe in themselves, showing them that they can make a difference in the world and achieve their own dreams.
Upcoming JA Programs
New!
JA Inspire Virtual Career Expo: Inspiring our Future Workforce
JA Inspire is more than a career fair, it brings together the business community and local schools and is designed to help launch middle and high school students into their futures: high school, college, and careers beyond. The multi-hour experience is configurable to align with local industry and career opportunities.
JA Finance Park
Kick Off on September 2022
Finance Park helps students make smart financial decisions that last a lifetime. It allows students to complete interactive online lessons at their own pace, supplemented by optional live Zoom sessions with knowledgeable volunteers. After each kick-off, programming continues for 8 weeks.
Open to grades 7-12
JA Stock Market Challenge
The Virtual Stock Market Challenge offers a unique and fun opportunity to enjoy quick-paced, team decision-making, just like a day on Wall Street - but squeezed into 90 minutes! You will have the opportunity to test your market savviness and financial knowledge.
JA Company Program Regional Competition
November 2022
The JA Company Program® unlocks the innate ability within students to solve a problem or a need in their community through organizing a student-run business. Students start a company and with the support of business volunteers, see it through various life cycles.
Participate in JA and earn a badge for your resume, college application, or social media!
Year-Round Programs
JA Job Shadow series prepares students to be entrepreneurial thinkers and prepared for the world of work. It provides engaging, academically enriching, and experiential learning sessions in work-readiness education and career perspectives. Job Shadows can be in person, where permitted, or virtual, allowing for students to attend from all over our 26-county territory.
A Career Speaker series volunteers share information about their career, work, and education experience. Partner with JA and over a dozen professionals from journalism, sports, finance, and tech who have impacted the lives of over 500 students throughout Northern California. The JA Career Speaker Series introduces students to different career paths, teaching skills around active listening, making observations, as well as critical thinking, social skills, and verbal communication
Past Programs
JA Entrepreneurship Summit
Monday, November 8, 2021
Be prepared to be inspired by area entrepreneurs as they share the ups and downs of starting their own company. Learn the creative skills needed to think "outside of the box" to launch your own entrepreneurial business.
STEM Week!
Presented by Robert Half
S.H.E. Leads STEM Summit
Hybrid
Tuesday, March 8, 2022
This event has become so popular, we are doing it TWICE this school year. This event targets middle and high school students who identify as female and nonbinary, inviting them to engage in an inspiring day of STEM career path exploration. Through workshops and speed mentoring with female advisors, students will develop workforce readiness and gain insights from panel speakers specializing in STEM.
STEM Week!
Presented by Robert Half
JA Tech & Innovation Summit
Hybrid
Thursday, March 10, 2022
During this one day, project-based STEM learning immersive, high school students are exposed to career paths and insights from the region's leading professionals in technology and engineering. Through workshops, mentor-driven discussions, and a gallery of innovative projects by the areas' most notable tech incubators, students will become prepared to launch into the future workforce.