Taking stock of education

Sixth-graders at Newport Heights can appreciate learning math through investing play money.Wednesday was stock market day at Africano Corp., a burgeoning company in Newport Beach. Designs for the company’s logo lined a bulletin board. Financial records of all the employees, some of them recently promoted, filled a drawer in back. As newspapers lay open across the tables, the boss handed a $50,000 check to each employee and asked them to comb the day’s stock report for shrewd investments.

The company’s headquarters was Marc Africano’s classroom at Newport Heights Elementary School, and the employees were his sixth-grade students. However, the workers treated the exercise as serious business. By the time the lunch bell rang, they had used their standards-based math skills to buy shares in Big 5, Dell and other major corporations.

“It makes adding and subtracting easier, because you have to compare the opening and closing prices each day,” said Fritz Howser, 12, who had invested his check in Apple computers and the Oakley sunglasses company.

Since the school year began in September, Africano has given his students daily lessons in economics -- partly to teach them about the business world and partly to use fractions, negative integers and other math concepts in the curriculum. Africano, who worked as a specialist for the Pacific Stock Exchange before turning to teaching, said the economics unit took math beyond the textbook.

“I apply math to real-world situations every day,” he explained. “If you don’t, it’s not useful for kids to learn it.”

True to his word, Africano runs the class like a genuine business -- in more than one respect. The 31 students began the year as “mailroom workers” and have moved up to higher positions by turning in homework, being on time and showing respect in class. By the end of the year, Africano said, his goal is to have each student become president of Africano Corp.

As students rise to higher jobs, they make more money: $2,000 for a mailroom worker, $10,000 for a manager and so on. Every two weeks, Africano distributes checks to his students -- sometimes with amendments. Students can earn bonuses for good behavior, but they can also be fined for being late or not turning in homework.

“They know to the penny how much I owe them, and when I give them less, they’re not nice about it,” Africano said, chuckling.

Students use Tungsten hand-held computers (“hand-helds” in the common lingo) to calculate stock prices and keep track of finances. Alise Larson, 11, said Wednesday that she planned to invest in computer companies because they were a personal passion.

“My family has always been into technology, and I learned to use the computer when I was 3,” she said.

About her investments, though, Alise was prudent: “I was thinking of eBay, except it’s gone down one-half percent.”

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot education writer Michael Miller visits a campus in the Newport-Mesa area and writes about his experience.

(LA)Linda Martinez, 11, and Jesse Torres, 12, use hand-held computers to learn lessons about economics and math. 20051213irehk0knPHOTOS BY KENT TREPTOW / DAILY PILOT(LA)Bryce Batcheller, left, Alexandra Lee, Juan Avila, Amber Hollinger and Alan Diaz check out stock prices in a 6th-grade class on managing money. 20051213irehjiknPHOTOS BY KENT TREPTOW / DAILY PILOT(LA)Bryce Batcheller, left, Alexandra Lee, Juan Avila, Amber Hollinger and Alan Diaz check out stock prices in a 6th-grade class on managing money.