QTL News & Stories
Arkansas Student Wins National Award
January 2008
Teaching in a low-wealth school didn't stop an Arkansas teacher from encouraging students to reach for the sky. She says participating in QTL helped her prepare them for an amazing success story.
OSCEOLA, AR - A rural Arkansas Delta school with a high percentage of students on free or reduced lunch might be an unexpected place to find the winner of a national stock market competition - but that's just what occurred this month.
David Cole, an eighth grader at the Academic Center of Excellence in Osceola, won first place out of almost 2,000 entries from across the country in the InvestWrite stock market competition, sponsored by the Council for Economic Education.
His Career Orientation teacher, Shantele Raper, credits Cole's talent as well as improved teaching strategies she and fellow teachers Tammy Wood (math) and Christy Gore (Language Arts) learned while attending QTL training in 2007.
The trio used skills and concepts learned in QTL to plan a collaborative project around the InvestWrite competition and the Stock Market Game. Find out how those strategies impacted the project, and students' learning, in her own words, and read QTL CEO Dave Boliek's observations on the impact of collaboration on The QTL Blog.
In addition, three teams of students who participated in the project were honored regionally for the performance of their 'stock portfolios.'
Cole has an opportunity to win a $10,000 scholarship, and he won his family a trip to Disney World. Raper wins a trip, too: she'll get to visit the New York Stock Exchange. Both were given laptops as an additional prize.
For more information, contact Robin Fred via e-mail at or call him at 888.507.3800.