{"id":57532,"date":"2025-08-26T19:39:44","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T23:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=57532"},"modified":"2025-08-26T19:40:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T23:40:22","slug":"new-center-aims-to-teach-students-life-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/08\/26\/new-center-aims-to-teach-students-life-skills\/","title":{"rendered":"New center aims to teach students life skills"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Chemistry, algebra, literature and\u2026 balancing a budget?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students in Polk County will soon learn life skills at the \u201cJunior Achievement Barnett Family Discovery Center\u201d in Lakeland.<\/p>\n\n\n

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 \u201cThe students in Polk County get to come and experience what it\u2019s like to be an adult for the day,\u201d said Shauna Dykes, market president at Junior Achievement of Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students will learn all about \u201cadulting\u201d at the JA Barnett Family Discovery Center currently being developed on the Tenoroc High School campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cThe students get to come, have jobs, work jobs, complete tasks. They learn about savings, earning and being able to spend money that they make,\u201d Dykes said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A JA Discovery Center already exists in Tampa, where students learn about banking, budgeting and being professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those are lessons not always taught in school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe teach to the standards, right, that teachers are able to do that. Some of our life skills that we would normally be teaching our children, they cannot be taught in the classroom,\u201d Dykes said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dykes said about 1,000 students from Polk County were able to attend the center in Tampa.<\/p>\n\n\n

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With the new center in Lakeland, she expects all Polk County students of a certain age to be able to participate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program involves a 12-week in-classroom curriculum culminating in a field trip to the Discovery Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two separate experiences: Finance Park for 8th graders and Biztown for 5th graders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finance Park is about managing an at-home budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf they make $50,000 a year and they have to choose housing and transportation and insurance and all the real-life things that you have to pay for, when they start looking at that and they go, \u2018Oh wow, this isn\u2019t enough money. I may need to make more money\u2019,\u201d Dukes said. \u201cThey may start looking into, \u2018Well what do these jobs pay? What is a living wage?\u2019 It starts to stimulate the thought process for them as they graduate and become adults.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Biztown, students learn how to run a town for a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo we have everything from mayors to bank tellers from CEOs to CFOs of all of the businesses, and they get to run the town,\u201d Dykes said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dykes said the program is funded by the Barnett family, as well as from local donors and some funding from the state and Polk County Public Schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The center at Tenoroc High School is set to open in September 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chemistry, algebra, literature and\u2026 balancing a budget? Students in Polk County will soon learn life skills at the \u201cJunior Achievement Barnett Family Discovery Center\u201d in Lakeland.  \u201cThe students in Polk… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDhcLzIwMjUtMDUtMDUtMTYtNDEtMzYtMS0xLndlYnA_Zml0PTI1NiUyQzE0NCZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6Ik5ldyBjZW50ZXIgYWltcyB0byB0ZWFjaCBzdHVkZW50cyBsaWZlIHNraWxscyIsInRlbXBsYXRlIjoiaGlnaHdheSIsImZvbnQiOiIiLCJibG9nX2lkIjoxNjMwNDA2NjF9.okkZJSFNXfxhog5LcRGDgONGOtOseP3n2AvEIRTQCIUMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":57533,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/2025-05-05-16-41-36-1-1.webp","type":"image\/webp"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[12063],"class_list":["post-57532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-new-center-aims-to-teach-students-life-skills"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57535,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57532\/revisions\/57535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}