Another successful LifeSmarts National Championship

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

I am returning from the 19^th annual LifeSmarts competitions this year in Atlanta elated as always with the energy and enthusiasm of the very talented teenagers that come to our nationals’ competitions.  Everyone who comes to nationals is a winner in more ways than one. They are literally winners because they’ve won their state competitions. But they are also winners because they have so much consumer savvy – often far more than their peers and even their parents or family members.

LifeSmarts tests contestants in five different areas: personal rights and responsibilities, health and safety, the environment, technology and personal finance. The National Consumers League sponsors LifeSmarts because we believe that young adults who understand the world around them and can navigate often complicated financial transactions with savvy and know how will make better consumers.

This year we had teams from 39 states competing – and hundreds of teens in the room cheering their teams on, getting to know kids from other states, studying lessons online in preparation for their competitions and having a lot of fun in their off time.

There are many other competitions for youth – spelling bees, math quiz shows, overall knowledge testing – but there are none that provide young people with the practical skills they will need to help keep them financially and economically on course for the rest of their lives. We are proud of the LifeSmarts program and we look forward to growing it so that youngsters from all 50 states can benefit from the practical skills the LifeSmarts program teaches them.

Florida wins the 19th annual national LifeSmarts championship

The student team from Paxon School for Advanced Studies in Jacksonville, FL was crowned national LifeSmarts champions in Atlanta on Tuesday, April 23. After a tough final match against the second-place team from Barrington High School in Rhode Island, the teens from the Florida outscored their opponents and did it with great sportsmanship. Teams from Tennessee and Pennsylvania placed third. Congratulations to everyone who participated in this year’s tournament, the biggest ever, and helped make the competition a huge success. Hopefully we will see everyone again at our national tournament next year in…Orlando. Stay up to date on consumer issues year round by following NCL on Twitter at NCL_Tweets.

LifeSmarts Day 4: A champion will be crowned

Who will win it all? Our final four teams Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Florida have competed against fellow teams for three days and have demonstrated remarkable consumer acumen. Today, we crown a champion. Today, we find out what state can claim LifeSmarts expertise and bathe in LifeSmarts glory for the next year. Thank you to everyone who helped us spread LifeSmarts on Twitter using #LifeSmarts2013 and ensured our biggest and best LifeSmarts competition to date! Follow the finals on our live stream at  www.LifeSmarts.org.

LifeSmarts Day 3: The competition rages on

Pic submitted via Twitter from@ndweinberg. Follow the event! #LifeSmarts2013

We have officially passed the halfway point of the LifeSmarts competition, and by the day’s close we will know our final four teams. Today, the students will have a short break from competition as former NFL pro-bowler Warrick Dunn comes to LifeSmarts to participate in our Visa Financial Football event. To stay up-to-date on the latest scores, follow our competition on Facebook and Twitter. #LifeSmarts2013

LifeSmarts announces partnership with UL’s Safety Smart Ambassador program

By Lisa Hertzberg, LifeSmarts Program Director

LifeSmarts is offering an exciting new opportunity for its participants: Safety Smart! Our latest expansion effort and partnership, with Underwriters Laboratories, (UL), is offering teens a chance to focus on health and safety curriculum while giving back through community service.

By combining efforts on a joint educational project, LifeSmarts and UL are teaming up to offer LifeSmarts participants a win-win opportunity – students gain new resources to learn about relevant topics and prepare for competition, and demonstrate their leadership skills by providing Safety Smart presentations to young children in their communities.

Safety Smart is a program from UL that operates under the philosophy that unintentional injuries are avoidable and preventable when people make smart choices. When Safety Smart Ambassadors share Safety Smart concepts with children, they help raise awareness and inspire action. Safety Smart Ambassadors help cultivate a younger generation of children to be Safety Advocates…Safety Scientists…Safety Smart.

Thanks to this new partnership, LifeSmarts participants will gain from UL’s vast research in safety science, which has been used to develop new competition questions, a 50-question TeamSmarts competition, a LifeSmarts U lesson, and team challenges for 2013 live competitions.

In addition, we are encouraging LifeSmarts participants to become Safety Smart Ambassadors. Three lessons have been created for LifeSmarts student leaders to teach young children about the benefits of ‘going green’ and being ‘healthy and fit.’ We’re providing the tools; now it’s up to our student participants to get out there in their communities to make a difference!

The LifeSmarts Safety Smart Ambassador program is:

• Quick and easy – each lesson is designed as a 30 minute presentation
• Fun – Timon and Pumbaa from Disney’s The Lion King introduce the topics in DVDs available free to Student Ambassadors
• Educational – young children will gain knowledge about important environmental and health and safety topics, and high school students will learn along with them
• Satisfying – LifeSmarts participants will have the opportunity to provide a quality, interactive lesson to younger children, serving as mentors and demonstrating leadership in their community
• A great fit – Many students are required to do community service, participate in service learning, or complete a senior project – the Safety Smart Ambassador program helps meet all of these requirements
• Turnkey – everything you need to get started is in one place:www.lifesmarts.org/SAFETYSMART
• Rewarding –Students who participate in the LifeSmarts Safety Ambassador program may be eligible to win prizes and scholarships. See: www.lifesmarts.org/SAFETYSMART/PRIZES to learn more.

LifeSmarts is pleased to partner with UL, and working with our dedicated and inspiring student leaders, we are excited about the positive impact this program will have across the country. We can’t wait to see what our LifeSmarts Safety Smart Ambassadors will do! Join us today! www.lifesmarts.org/SAFETYSMART

LifeSmarts Day 2: The competition heats up

High fives from California team

After a day of meeting fellow LifeSmarts competitors and exchanging gifts from back home with sister teams, the competition heats up today as we embark on a full day of events. Today will feature both individual assessments and team matches. After a good night’s sleep the students are fired up and ready to start competing.

LifeSmarts Day 1: Welcome to Atlanta!

Arkansas has arrived!

Students have begun arriving for the 2013 LifeSmarts National Championship in beautiful Atlanta. Students from 39 teams from every corner of America will travel to Atlanta to  flex their consumer knowledge muscles at the four-day tournament. Check out LifeSmarts on Facebook and follow the competition on Twitter using #LifeSmarts2013 to see if your state will take the title of LifeSmarts 2013 champion.

LifeSmarts dispatches from the road: McKinley Technology High School wins LifeSmarts DC for the second year in a row

McKinley Technology High School are repeat champions

By LifeSmarts staff

Entering the day, there was one ticket left to be punched for the LifeSmarts national competition, which will be held in Atlanta, GA from April 19-23. McKinley Technology High School won the DC LifeSmarts competition today, ensuring the last spot in beautiful Atlanta. After a long day of heated competition, McKinley Tech’s two teams faced off in the final round of questioning, each flexing their consumer knowledge muscles. This was not uncommon territory for McKinley, which sent a team to the national competition in Philadelphia last year.

Delonte Bright, a member of the 2012 McKinley team and current advisor to the new DC champion team, said LifeSmarts gives students a great opportunity to learn about consumer issues.

“There are so many things I learned in LifeSmarts that have been useful in the real world,” said Bright. Het offered one example, saying, “Now I know how many times I can go to the bank and withdraw money before I get a penalty. I never have to worry about that anymore.”

Bright, who graduated from McKinley in 2012, now attends District of Columbia University, home for the DC LifeSmarts competition. He serves as a mentor to current team captain Leslie Ogu. This McKinley senior, who received a full scholarship to George Washington University for fall 2013, says that LifeSmarts is a great tool to empower consumers, and he has learned so much new information that will be helpful the rest of his life. Ogu hopes to study computer science at GW. He is already knowledgeable of technology issues evidenced by his top score in the individual technology assessment portion of the competition.

The LifeSmarts competition is a nationwide consumer challenge for high school students. It is a program of the National Consumers League. This year in Atlanta, representatives from 36 states will descend upon the Peach State for four days of consumer knowledge competitions. The participants will compete in a variety of games, testing their knowledge in personal finance, consumer rights and responsibilities, health and safety, technology, and the environment. We look forward to welcoming McKinley and all of our other winners from around the country to Atlanta next month. Follow the action on twitter at #LifeSmarts2013.

Dispatches from the Road: The New Yankee LifeSmarts

Sally Greenberg gives the opening remarks in Mass.

Milton High School wins the crown in Mass.

Eager competitors sit, ready for action, at the finals in Mass.

Spaulding High School captures the NH state title

Goffstown High School, rode in style to the finals in NH

Judges in NH

      By Seth Woods, LifeSmarts Outreach Coordinator

For several weeks, high school students across the country will be competing in LifeSmarts state tournaments, earning automatic bids to the National Championship in Atlanta. Outreach coordinator Seth Woods is attending several of these events and submitted this report.

I’d like to say that the travel wasn’t getting to me, but let’s be honest, after nearly two weeks on the road, jumping from state to state to state every 48 hours, I was starting to falter. I was really proud that I had only eaten fast food once (and that was in the Atlanta airport, every single flight I took connected through ATL). And as my plane touched down in Boston, I genuinely had no idea if I was going to make it.

Fortunately for me, reinforcements were on their way. The first state (sorry, commonwealth) was Massachusetts, and our Rhode Island coordinator, Jim Hedemark, was joining forces with the Boston Federal Reserve to put on Monday’s show. We were also very honored to have MA Treasurer Steve Grossman attend, along with NCL’s Executive Director, Sally Greenberg. Both gave very inspiring speeches to start the day. Using a modified double-elimination bracket, ten teams quickly whittled down to two schools: last year’s champion Milton High, and Palmer High, who won the title two years ago. It came down to the tiebreakers, but Milton successfully held onto their crown for another year.

Only 48 hours later, I was in Manchester, New Hampshire for their tournament; and got to meet their state Treasurer Catherine Provencher. Six teams were playing for the title (again using a modified bracket), including one new team from Goffstown. Although they were one of the first teams out, they were definitely going out on top: since it was cheaper than renting a school bus, the team rode the ten miles to the tournament in a stretch limousine! The finals were a rematch from earlier in the day; Raymond won the first match, but Spaulding High worked their way through the wild card to take home the title for the second year in a row.

I was noticing a recurring theme here: the matches were always close, but previous winners had a knack for pulling out victory in the last moments of competition. It happened in Connecticut too, the final stop of my whirlwind tour. Danielson Ellis Tech, a first-time team, entered the championship match as the #1 seed; however, an early response on the final question proved fatal, and Waterbury Crosby was able to steal the final 10 points, winning the match by nine.

I was very happy for the teams that won (and can’t wait to see them again in Atlanta), and very impressed with the teams that battled hard but came up just short. Despite falling short, they showed great character and sportsmanship, and determination to succeed in the future.  I know they had a great time, and are ready to play again. And I can’t wait to see them—next year’s season is only 165 days away!

The next report: The final competition before the national tournament is the DC championship.  

LifeSmarts dispatches from the road: Laissez les LifeSmarts Rouler!

 

Congratulations to Acadiana High School on your victory! See you in Atlanta.

      By Seth Woods, LifeSmarts Outreach Coordinator

High school students across the country are competing in LifeSmarts state tournaments, earning automatic bids to the National Championship in Atlanta. Outreach Coordinator Seth Woods is attending several of these events and submitted this report.

Louisiana’s always been a little different: their counties are called “parishes,” Mardi Gras is a state holiday, and their laws are based on the Napoleonic Code (rather than the common law system used in the other 49 states). So I wasn’t surprised that the LifeSmarts state tournament would be unique.

For starters, this was the first year Louisiana would be hosting an in-person tournament in about a decade. Thanks to the generosity of the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office and the Louisiana Jump$tart Coalition, four teams were able to meet in Baton Rouge for an exciting day full of consumer comprehension and competition. My hopes were kept relatively realistic, since no one in the room had seen the program before. Yet again, I was wrong.

The first team to arrive was a 4-H team from Live Oak High, in Livingston Parish. Armed with matching green polos, stacks of flashcards, printouts and old questions (all found on our Web site), as soon as they settled in at their table they started studying. During breaks, they even used a tablet computer to take practice quizzes together! These girls had come to play…and to win.

Next to arrive were the DECA students from Dutchtown High in Ascension Parish, followed by two FBLA teams from Acadiana High in Lafayette Parish. As business and marketing students, they all had dressed for success. But could they impress on the stage? There was only one way to find out.

The Louisiana tournament used a double-elimination bracket to determine the champion, so the first thing our teams did was draw for position. The first match would be between Live Oak and Dutchtown (a very close match, Live Oak won 115-100), meaning that the two Acadiana teams would play each other in the second match. Coach Stephanie Bennett could barely contain herself, and she was just hoping her two teams wouldn’t have to play each other again.

That didn’t happen, as Acadiana’s A-team lost their first match but edged out a very smart Dutchtown team in the elimination bracket. However, their luck ran out quickly as Live Oak stormed back through the lower bracket, thanks in part to a perfect 50-out-of-50 score in the lightning round on food portions. By mid-afternoon, we were down to our championship teams: Live Oak, and the unbeaten Acadiana B-team.

The championship was dramatic. Acadiana started the match strong, and was leading halfway through the Challenge round, but Live Oak squeaked out a 95 – 89 win. With both teams now with one loss, an extra tiebreaker round was needed. And there was no doubt about this match, thanks to a petite powerhouse from Acadiana. Thanks to her fast finger, she scored more than 100 of her team’s 150 points, nearly doubling Live Oak with a final score of 150 – 77.

At first I was genuinely surprised at how quickly the teams caught on to LifeSmarts, but then I realized these guys were ready for this. They knew their stuff, and once they got behind the buzzer it was just second nature. But that’s Louisiana for you: a little different, but a lot of fun.

The next report: Seth ventures to New England for a trio of state tournaments.