The School Year Is Officially Underway

Image caption: By discovering their strengths, exploring new opportunities, and connecting learning to the real world, students begin to see what’s possible for their future.

A new school year is officially underway across Eastern Iowa. Classrooms are filling, routines are taking shape, and students are beginning another year of learning.

But alongside reading, math, science, and everything else on their schedules, students are also beginning to answer some much bigger questions:

What am I good at? What interests me? What opportunities are out there for me? How does what I’m learning today connect to my future? And what could my life look like after graduation?

Those questions are at the heart of Junior Achievement of Eastern Iowa.

Throughout this school year, thousands of students will participate in JA experiences designed to help them connect what they learn in school with the world beyond the classroom.

For some, that journey begins right in their classroom, where community volunteers bring JA lessons to life. Students explore how money works, how businesses and communities are connected, what it means to be an entrepreneur, and how the choices they make today can influence their future.

For others, the learning becomes even more immersive.

Through JA BizTown® Mobile, students step into a simulated community where they become employees, consumers, business leaders, and citizens for the day. Suddenly, concepts they've learned in the classroom have a purpose. They aren't simply learning about earning a paycheck or managing money—they're doing it.

At JA Career Inspire, middle school students meet professionals representing a wide range of industries and career paths. They can ask questions, try hands-on activities, and discover opportunities they may never have known existed. In fact, 72% of participating students in 2025 reported discovering a new career path through the experience.

Image caption: Hands-on experiences help students connect what they’re learning today with the possibilities ahead.

Dream Accelerator™ gives fifth-, seventh-, and ninth-grade students something equally important: the opportunity to better understand themselves. Through age-appropriate experiences, students explore their individual strengths and interests and begin thinking about how those qualities might connect to who they want to become and what they may want to do in the future.

Because before students can choose a path, they need opportunities to discover what excites them, recognize what they bring to the table, and imagine where those strengths might take them.

Each JA experience looks different, but they share a common purpose: helping young people see what's possible.

That matters for students. Exposure creates possibilities. A conversation with a volunteer, a hands-on activity, or a moment of self-discovery can help a student begin to picture a future they hadn't considered before. It can give greater meaning to what they're learning in school and help them understand that the future isn't simply something that happens to them—it's something they can begin shaping today.

It matters for our communities, too.

Today's students are Eastern Iowa's future employees, entrepreneurs, innovators, business owners, and community leaders. Preparing them for what comes next isn't something schools or employers can do alone. It takes educators, businesses, volunteers, donors, and community partners working together to help young people build the knowledge, confidence, experiences, and connections they need to succeed.

Last school year, Junior Achievement of Eastern Iowa reached more than 53,000 students. Behind that number are thousands of individual moments when a student discovered something new about money, work, business—or themselves.

As another school year begins, we're ready to create thousands more.

Because when we help a young person see what's possible for their future, we're doing more than preparing one student for what comes next.

We're helping build the future of Eastern Iowa.