Starting up last week was this year's version of Mr. Williams' Government Stock Project. Each year seniors participate in a project that turns the classroom into a sort of investment company. Every class is divided into small groups of around four students and must divide fake money between the members. Each group member is allowed to choose one investment sector (i.e. pharmaceuticals, energy, or consumer goods) to put their money into. Each team has a group leader who is a sort of executive. His or her job is to oversee group activity, keep everybody on task, and help with investment ideas that each member may have. Each student has $150,000 to spend except for the group leader who gets $200,000. Members are not allowed to spend more than 25% of their money on one stock but are allowed to keep an amount of money in a cash account which gains a small percent of interest. The cash accounts are readily accessible to "withdrawal" money for uses such as buying more of a stock.

An interesting part of the project is left up to the team executives. Team leaders may choose to hire and fire members as they see fit. If, for example, Group 1's leader has a large amount of cash on hand and his member assigned to the energy sector goes down 10%, then the leader can choose to fire the poor performing member and lure a better performing member from another group to join his group if the opposing member did better on the same sector. This allows the classroom to be more competitive and urges students to participate and take the project seriously. Each month, teams must turn in a spreadsheet for each person along with a presentation as to why they made the changes they chose as well as why each stock was selected. Spreadsheets must show each stock purchased as well as the price, the number of shares, the commission cost, total cost, and date of purchase.

So far the groups have not had time to make any personnel changes, but they have already assigned sectors and bought the first round of stocks. The project will continue into the second semester until the deadline is reached. At that time the teams will add up total earnings and losses along with extra cash. Teams will be assigned a large number of extra credit points depending on where they placed in the project. This project teaches students the basis of investing as well as the ups and downs of personnel changes in a business. The project is already slowly getting competitive, and the trash talk has started to take place.