1. As someone in this experience, tell your story.  Describe your experience. Tell us about the highs and the lows.  What were your major takeaways? What did you learn? How did you like it?  Be sure to explain your answers.

When I was told that I was a judge, I got really nervous. Not only was I gonna have to sort out fights, but I also had to handle most of the fines. I got really nervous about this because I was afraid I was going to make people upset when I have to fine them. but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. sure, there was sometimes I did have to fine people but at least most of the fines were cheap and easy to pay. this made it a lot easier for me to not get stressed while handing people fines. also, most days were pretty chill. not many people were fined. plus, I loved that I was able to donate money. I’d have to say one major take away was that I loved all of the fun things we got to do like write our own checks or actually do little jobs. One thing I learned was how to write my name in cursive because before this experience I did not know how to write cursive at all. 

2. How did your character’s role/situation in the game affect your ability to take care of yourself?  Think about your income, job, rent, the amount of money you had, any loans you took out, and your health situation.

It was pretty easy to pay rent and take care of myself. I would get paid $1,500 a week because I was the second-highest role in the classroom, the judge. So I would pay off rent easily and still have plenty of money for myself. My health was pretty good too because of my income.

3. What aspects of your character’s life encouraged success?  What aspects of your character’s life brought about failure? Explain how that process worked.

The success as a judge was that I earned a lot of money which made my life a whole lot easier because it was easy to pay rent. The failure of being a judge was that I had to sort out fights and also to handle most of the fines. This was not easy for me because I was a little too nice about the fines.  

4. What attempts did you make to improve your character’s life?  How successful were these attempts? How difficult were those attempts and why?

At the start of my job, I was being a little too nice and removing everyone’s fines. so I tried to be a little meaner and give people their fines. This was not easy for me to do because I was really stressed that I was going to make people upset when I fined them.  But in the end, it worked out great because the fines were really cheap so it wasn’t that bad to hand them out.

5. In bullet points, write a list of what you learned about poverty from this activity.  Be sure to include a brief description next to each item about what you learned, explaining your learning/thinking.

Housing:

• Rent
  • Paying rent on chairs and tables
• Evictions
  • People evicted from the seat
  • Read parts of book Evicted
  • Photo analysis of Eviction
• Utilities
  • Cost of
  • How to understand electrical and gas meters

Health care:

• Different ailments
  • Type II Diabetes and Hypertension
• The cost of medication
• How to get medication paid for if living in poverty/old
  • Medicare vs. Medicaid

Employment: 

• Jobs
  • Completing a task
  • Getting paid
  • Getting a raise
    • CEO pay vs. normal employee pay
  • Applying for new job
  • Interviewing for new job
• Firings
  • People fired from job
• Education
  • Taking a GED test to earn academic credit

Finances:

• Taxes 
• Balancing your budget
  • P&L statement
• Checks
  • Writing checks
  • Cashing checks with direct deposit
• Fines
  • Breaking rules
  • Failure to complete tasks correctly
  • Committing financial fraud
  • Identity theft
• Minimum wage
  • Should teens get paid more article

Connections to Israel

• Poverty board game with Khen