Video on scams earns Johnston student $2,500

“Beware of Scams” is the title of a video that has won Warwick Area Career & Technical Center junior  Jonah Johnston second place in a national contest sponsored by the American Bankers Association.

Johnston’s selection was made at the recent ABA conference and online.  Johnston and peers at the WACTC Business Academy of Marketing and Management have been working in collaboration with Centreville Bank and Meg Apostolou, the bank’s community development manager, who urged them to enter the contest.

Academy director Sharon Bowen is grateful for the opportunity the bank has provided students to learn business skills and “figure out how they could identify ways to determine unethical problematic potentials in the business world, through the lens of the financial industry.” 

“This award provides another opportunity for my students to delve into different aspects of the business world, for a real life problem,” Bowen wrote in an email. She celebrated the award by treating the class to cake.

Johnston, who lives in Johnston and was homeschooled, imagines another opportunity. He said he will put his $2,500 second-place award toward the purchase of a car, which will probably be a Honda CRV. In addition to the cash prize, as a winner in the Lights, Camera, Save ABA contest, Johnston will also receive an iPad, Apple Pencil, ring light wireless microphone and other devices valued at more than $500.

Johnston already holds a high school diploma from Penn Foster High School, a for-profit online high school based in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He plans to complete the program at WACTC next year and is thinking of continuing his education at CCRI.

Asked what he likes about the academy, Johnston said he appreciates Bowen’s “hands-on approach” to teaching. “It’s not just do it my way,” he said. “It’s up to interpretation and creativity.”

“As a high performing school, we maintain cutting-edge opportunities to provide to our students, so that we can maintain our status in the Career & Tech education environment,” Bowen said.