My company’s founder, Mr. J. Kirby Risk, was a huge supporter of Junior Achievement, a program whose purpose was to inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy. That’s probably one of the reasons I volunteered to participate in the Columbus, Indiana, Junior Achievement program called “Project Business.” I had a once-a-week class in a ninth-grade classroom teaching students about business.

It was the first year for the program in Columbus and an experiment by the local school district to test its value. My enjoyment of the experience was probably heightened by being placed in a class of exceptional students. These kids were incredibly bright, enthusiastic, and eager to learn.

Before the school year began, I contacted local businesses asking for an assortment of their free advertising items. Consequently, I had quite a pile of ballpoint pens, note pads, insulated cups, small teddy bears, and a variety of trinkets all bearing local company names or logos. This gave me an opportunity to introduce and describe the businesses providing the goodies. I called the items “incentive pay” and awarded those prizes to students for class participation. Wow! Talk about a motivator. My questions to the class were met with frantic hand waving and shouts of “Me! Me! Me!”

During my first class, I showed the students a collection of business cards and pointed out the clever logos the businesses had created. I talked about how recognizable some national and international symbols had become. I then started drawing some of the logos on the blackboard and awarded incentive pay to the student first identifying the company or institution represented by the symbol. Some were easy like General Electric , or Indiana University. I then started drawing the Disney World logo with its two mouse ears on either side of a globe. I had only drawn half an ear on one side of the world when from the back of the room I heard a mature male voice shout, “Disney World!”

“Oh, come on Mr. Howland, this is supposed to be for your students to answer.”

Students were then asked to create business cards for me on 3 X 5 cards with their names and a created logo. I used the cards to familiarize myself with the kid’s names and to call on them in class.

The class played a stock market game in which each student was given an imaginary $10,000 to buy one stock which we tracked each week. I assumed the students would select favorite brand companies like Sony or Nike, but it was obvious some dads helped with the selection when I saw they picked newly listed oil drilling companies or obscure pharmaceuticals with just announced wonder drugs. By the end of the year several students had more than tripled their initial investment.

My students were a great audience and the time I spent thinking up ideas for each class was enthusiastically received. The time we studied oil cartels, I came to the classroom wearing an Arab headdress. The kids loved it.

My most memorable experience was taking my ninth-grade class to the Cummins Engine Company Annual meeting. The school arranged bus transportation for us. I gave the students a list of twenty questions to answer to encourage them paying close attention to the business being discussed, i.e. What was year-end price per share? How many board of director members does Cummins have? Etc.

The Cummins CEO, Mr. James Henderson, announced the presence of my class to the annual meeting attendees. After the presentations by Cummins’ executives, Mr. Henderson asked if there were any questions from the audience. To my great surprise, one of my students raised his hand. “What does it take to become a member of your board?” he asked.

After a few chuckles, this gave Mr. Henderson a wonderful opportunity to sing the praises and qualifications of the current board members. And then he asked my student’s name because he said he believed the young man would be an excellent board member candidate someday. Gad, I loved it.

Without a doubt, my year playing “executive in the classroom” was one of the highlights of my business career.