The Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce presented its career awareness program, Reality Check, to 4,140 9th graders in 18 Hamilton County Schools during the 2004-2005 academic year.

"Reality Check provides students with ‘real world experience’ in paying household bills and making financial decisions for their family," says Mattie Moran, Reality Check coordinator and Chamber director of workforce development and education.

"During the exercise, each student is assigned a family, a job and an income. Then they must make purchases – food, clothing, housing and so on, based on their family demands and wages."

Ms. Moran says that the students soon realize the difficulty of managing a household on a limited salary, and they discover the relationship between level of education and level of income.

The program takes about 45 minutes as students visit 13 booths where they must pay for everything from transportation to groceries.

"We are very grateful for the 391 community volunteers who manned the Reality stations," Ms. Moran said. "Our volunteers, many of them professionals, devoted many hours of time to advising the students on such matters as whether to buy a house or rent an apartment and whether to buy designer or discount clothing."

Reality Check won a Replicated Best Practices Award in 2003 at the 11th annual conference of the Tennessee Association of Partners in Education.

Reality Check presentations will begin again in the fall. To arrange for a presentation, contact Cathy Humble at 763-4321 or chumble@chattanoogachamber.com

Reality Check co-chairs are June Puett of the UT Extension Service and Robin Howard of Adolescent, Young Adult and Family Therapy.

Reality co-sponsors are Chattanooga State Technical Community College, Men of Hope, UTC and UT Extension Service.