Winning Futures – Inspiring and preparing youth to succeed through mentoring.

Archive for November, 2011

The school tour activity is used in the Winning Futures classroom to make the mentors comfortable at the school and to have the mentoring teams get to know each other. It is a simple activity with a list of seven to 10 locations for each mentoring match to visit throughout the school.

*It is helpful to alert the school that the class will be taking a tour and that they will be talking to adults at each of the locations.

Download a School Tour Handout at www.WinningFuturesBooks.org and customize it for your location. Go to the Online Support page and locate the School Tour Handout. Remember to have your user ID and password.

Credit cards may seem like an easy solution to not having money for what you want.  Teaching students the reality of credit cards can help them be financially successful in years to come.  Below is a lesson used in the Winning Futures classroom to bring reality to getting into debt!

Scenario: Imagine that you love video games. No, imagine that you live for video games.  Imagine next, that a new version of the X-Box just went on sale this week at Wal-Mart for $199 and a couple of games for $49.99 to go with it, bringing the total to $300.00.

You have friends coming over this weekend and you would love to have the system at home for everyone to play.

The only… little bitty problem: You don’t have the cash/money.

The simple and Oh!  So… easy solution: Your new credit card, and a salesperson telling you, “you don’t have to wait until you earn the money; why not enjoy your X-Box tonight, while you’re paying it off in “easy payments“.

Scenario- Discussion Questions:

1. If the average person had a credit card and really wanted this X-Box, what do you think he would do?

2. What would you do?   What are the consequences of waiting until you earned the money to purchase it with cash? (You might not have as much fun for a few weeks.)

3. What could the consequences be, if you purchased it with the credit card? (If you can’t pay it off by the end of the month, you start paying interest. You pay much more for it in the long run. You begin to charge other things. You don’t have the money to invest).

Buying on credit and making monthly payments puts multiplication working against you. Saving the money to buy it outright and investing the money you would have spent in interest puts multiplication working for you.

Beating the System: Credit Cards and “Easy” Payments: 

Let’s look more closely at that X-Box and the accompanying games, which sold for a total of $300.00.  Let’s imagine that you have the average credit card interest rate from (2005) of 13%.

(You will find that the rate is in small, almost unreadable type, at the bottom of your application).

Average Minimum payment is 3%.  Ask yourself, “3%” of what?  Answer is “3% of the amount of your purchase. Therefore, your minimum payment is $9.00 per month.  If you just make the minimum payment, you will still be paying for it over four years and at least one newer version of the X-Box will have been made.  During the 48 months that you are making payments, you will pay $324.00 in interest. That’s money over and above the $300.  It’s the multiplication of that 13% working against you. Over time, you paid $624 for that X-Box and the two games.

A mentor doesn’t pave the way or help you choose a direction, they guide in picking the bricks and expanding your imagination.

A mentor doesn’t give the answer or shine the light at the end of the tunnel, they lead you in asking the right question and point the obstacles, so you don’t stumble!

A mentor doesn’t give you the frame of the big picture; they guide you in making decisions leading to a Winning Future!

Elena Kapintcheva – Winning Futures Alumni, Cousino High School

In all aspects of life, we have to be able to work with people around us. A great way to develop team work and get to know your teammates is by using games to create a fun and open forum. In the Winning Futures classroom, teams play a modified version of the game Jenga. Teams are asked to set a goal as to how high they want to build their tower. If the tower falls over, they just start again!  But of course the purpose of this game is not just to work together, but to get to know one another. Winning Futures uses a modified version by using AveryLabels8167 to print questions on and place over the game pieces!

How the game is played:

The mentor goes first by pulling out a block, and then play continues to the left. Before each team member can make a move, he/she must read a question to the person on their left. The person on the left must reply before the reader can make their move. Each player must remove a block. They then place that block on top of the tower in the same crisscross way the tower was built. You may use only one hand. You may touch a block to see if it is loose. Once the player has completed his/her move and the question has been answered, it is the next players turn.

With the 2011-2012 school year off to a great start at Winning Futures, we welcome new mentors to our program!

Veteran mentors – do you have any mentoring advice that you have found works well for you?  If so, please share!