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New and exciting changes have come to ALL of our program curriculums and Townes!
With school starting up, August is our time of year to deeply analyze our curriculum, teacher orientations, and the overall processes in AmeriTowne and International Towne. Over the last few weeks, the Young Americans Programs team has been really busy making sure everything is ready for our first students of the 2017-18 school year on September 5.
In International Towne, there are some big changes to the lessons teachers are being asked to teach. There are now twenty essential lessons in the International Towne curriculum: 18 happen before their day of running the world, and two that happen after for some follow-up learning. These lessons are completely fundamental to a successful day and for the students to have the most valuable growth through our program. There are brand new lessons that we got to practice this summer, including a component of philanthropy in which students will be given the opportunity to donate a portion of their salary from their credit card on some new kiosks that can be found in the center of the world. We have not removed old lessons from the curriculum on Dropbox, so they are still accessible if teachers still want to still teach lessons they may have taught for International Towne in the past.
There haven’t been major changes to the Young Ameritowne curriculum, but the Accountant role has received an overhaul: Accountants will now pay most of their bills with an electronic transfer instead of writing checks during the day of Towne. The accountants will still write some business checks, the paychecks for their coworkers, and the bank loan repayment check because we feel there is great value in understanding business checks and checking accounts. With less writing involved, we hope this change will allow teachers more options when choosing Accountants and will help AmeriTowne stay up-to-date with the real-world shift to electronic banking systems.
Also in AmeriTowne, the photos and commercials created by the students will all be uploaded at the end of the day to a dropbox folder that teachers will get a link to, this will help expedite the process of wrap lessons, and prevent any DVD damages from not allowing students to view their hard work and fun stories!
August is a time for shop upgrades as well. In Young Ameritowne at Belmar there are so many new pieces and parts I 
almost don’t know where to start! Our Development team and our corporate partners have worked very hard this summer to add color and fun donor activities to the shops at Belmar. In particular, proud partner Schomp Automotive has joined forces with Bandimere Speedway and Pickering’s Auto Service to update the Parts and Service Shop and re-work the tasks to be more hands-on, fluid, and real-world. We are really excited to see all of these jobs in action and to watch our half of car get all of the loving maintenance it needs.
There are going to be changes to the Belmar building throughout the fall, as construction on a new Belmar Bank Branch is due to being within the week!
With all of these great changes in the works, we are so excited to have a program that allows for us to grow and keep up with the constant changes in our financial system. As a whole we are ready to have schools back in our building and our staff is ready to give them a great experience on their day of Towne—whether it is International Towne or AmeriTowne!
