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Joanne Benjamin
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The 'Wall Street Journal' taps Benjamin for advisory board
She'll advise, contribute to classroom edition
By Jeff Kearns
The Wall Street Journal announced last week that Los Gatos High School teacher and former Town Council member Joanne Benjamin has been appointed to the advisory board of the Journal's Classroom Edition.
The board is made up of 13 teachers from around the country who pick Wall Street Journal articles for inclusion in the Classroom Edition and keep editors and staff up-to-date on education trends.
Benjamin will also write lesson plans for teachers and students on topics ranging from public policy and technology to marketing and stock exchanges.
"We look for articles that would hit our themes and for things high school students would enjoy reading," Benjamin says. "It's a good way to bring what's happening in the world today into the classroom. Instead of reading out of a textbook, the students read articles about things that are real and happening."
Benjamin became involved with the Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition last year when she started writing lesson plans for teachers who use the publication. Last week, she flew back east for the advisory board's annual meeting at Rutgers University in South Brunswick, N.J., and that's when board members asked her to join.
Benjamin, who teaches economics and government, has already written lesson plans on the euro (the European Union's new unit of exchange), on pollution credits for corporations, and on a teenager who made a killing in the stock market.
Benjamin, who is president of the California Association of School Economics Teachers, took a sabbatical last year to write curricula for APEX, a Seattle-based startup company, which offers advanced placement classes on the Web.
She's now returning to the classroom this fall to teach two classes: Advanced Placement Economics and Advanced Placement U.S. Government. On top of that, she also took a new job this summer as the associate director of Resource Area for Teachers, a San Jose-based organization, which collects surplus material from companies--anything from computers to notebooks to office supplies--and resells it to its 3,500 member teachers at a steep discount.
Benjamin served 16 years on the Town Council, stepping down after her fourth term in office last December.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
