What is the Summit?

The Summit is a world trade simulation for high school students, which teaches fundamental economic concepts within the context of international trade. Utilizing experience-based learning, the Summit challenges high school students to think critically about the benefits and costs of trade and to explore globalization.

The Summit includes a ten-week curriculum in which students work in teams as virtual “Economic Advisers” to an assigned country and create a strategic plan to improve living standards for their population. The program culminates in a Mini Summit event at the school and a Regional Summit competition hosted at a local university. On that day, students implement their plans through activities such as alliance negotiations, economic proposal debates, a geography quiz, an economics test and an international export-import trading session.

History

Between 1998 and 2004, with a grant provided by the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation, Jody Hoff and the Idaho Council on Economic Education (ICEE) created and developed the IES curriculum, a thirteen-lesson program designed around core high school economic content that focuses on the complexities of trade and globalization. The idea for the program originated from an international trade session that teachers Kali Kurdy and Elsa Bennett of Boise, Idaho’s Borah High School incorporated into their Model UN program. Ms. Hoff and the ICEE developed the program into a curriculum, complete with classroom materials, interactive trade simulation activities, and a day-long summit competition.

By 2002, the program was being used in nearly every high school economics class in the State of Idaho. During this time, the ICEE also established a partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (FRBSF). For the following four years, FRBSF assisted in delivering the program outside the borders of Idaho, helping to establish three different Regional Summits throughout the State of California. By 2004, the IES program had also made its way into classrooms in Illinois, Indiana, Washington, and Tennessee.

In August 2006, FRBSF reached a licensing agreement with the ICEE to distribute the IES program throughout the Federal Reserve’s Twelfth District (including Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington), making the IES program an increasingly important component of the Fed’s broader educational outreach. Currently, FRBSF provides participating teachers with IES training and materials at no cost to teachers or schools.