Galen Gammino Awarded For Stock Market Savvy

Galen Gammino and the rest of her Personal Finance classmates met in the East Greenwich High School library one day last week. That was unusual. But the presence of Gammino's parents was even stranger.

Something was up.

Turns out Gammino, a senior, was the first-place winner in Rhode Island of the SIFMA Foundation's student essay competition known as "InvestWrite." She won for an essay she wrote last fall about how the stock price for Chipotle restaurant would go up if competitor Taco Bell had an incidence of food poisoning such as the e coli outbreak in 2012. 

The competition is a culminating activity participants in a nationwide stock market game. Students in grades 4 through 12 are challenged to analyze an investment scenario and write an essay offering investment advice. Students consider real-world economic events and trends, conduct research online, and develop investment recommendations. The idea is to gain the skills they'll need to plan their own financial future.

Galen Gammino is one of 20,000 students each year across the nation who took the InvestWrite challenge.

She said the reason she picked Chipotle was simple – "I love Chipotle," she said, laughing.

This is not the first EGHS student or student of business teacher Patricia Page to excell in the InvestWrite competition. 

Last year, Charlotte Palmer came in first in Rhode Island and fifth overall. 

Congratulations Galen and Mrs. Page!

Patricia Page, Gammino's teacher, is the 2012-2013 East Greenwich School District Teacher of the Year.