So I discovered two new blogs to follow and I’m very
excited!
Wait, let me rephrase… I’m very excited to start reading
these blogs sometime next June, it’s going to be great!
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| Vicki Davis, the Cool Cat Teacher |
I found out about the Cool Cat Teacher blog through one of
my classmates via the AIC class I mentioned in my previous post. Vicki Davis,
the CoolCat, teaches one of the classes involved in the simulation but I had no
idea she also keeps up with a blog and records a podcast every other week. She
also keeps up with THREE CHILDREN, other social networking sites like Twitter and Google Plus
which makes a pre-service teacher like we wonder HOW DOES SHE FIND THE TIME?!
Well, I have a clue since I know she posted on my comment in the wee hours of
the morning: she doesn’t sleep. OK, I don’t know that for a fact, but I know
that she and many other educators work an unbelievable number of hours to get
the good work done and I think EduBloggers provide a really incredible service
to teachers by sharing their ideas and knowledge. They are a wonderful resource
for us all, teachers or not.
I was drawn to Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat blog because I know her,
but I was hooked when I saw the variety of content she was posting. One post in
particular really spoke to me. Vicki interviewed another EduBlogger, Brian Page
of FinEdChat, about teaching
financial literacy in a high school setting. This is an issue that I’ve been
keenly interested in for a long time. I first developed an interest in
introducing this to high school students when I worked at a private school in
Chicago. My colleague and I wanted to teach a seminar about financial literacy,
resume writing, and job-hunting to high school seniors. We wrote a proposal but
none of the students signed up for it so we never taught it (this was the week
between their senior service learning trip and commencement). Now that I’m
working with high school students I realize that this was probably not the way
they wanted to spend their final week of high school, exploring serious “adult”
issues. I’ve never stopped thinking about it though, so when I saw Vicki’s post
I was really intrigued.
Vicki and Brian shared that most financial literacy occurs
in the college classroom and that it leaves out students who don’t take the
college route. In other words, the teaching of financial literacy is generally
not equitable. Vicki asks a couple of pointed questions that align with my
thinking perfectly – she asks if we are discriminating and if we are promoting
financial ignorance by not teaching this content in high schools. In her
podcast she unpacks these questions and asks pointedly if we are “… saying that
only certain students are going to have money, because certainly if people
don’t know how to handle money how can they keep it, how can they manage it?
How can they pay bills on time? Are we
discriminating by not educating every child who goes through high school on how
to do basic financial literacy?”
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| Excerpt form JA report on teen finance |
She and Brian spend some time discussing how students who
don’t go to college and, specifically, children with special educational needs
tend to be “victims of predatory lending practices.” Brian points out that there are only a
handful of states in the US that require students to take a personal finance
class. This made me think about the Junior Achievement
(JA) program we had in my middle school.
I found this little nugget that I’m not sure makes me feel good or bad but 20%
of the participating teens are “somewhat or extremely unsure about their
ability to budget successfully” and indicate that they will likely live with
their parents longer because of this. So, I’m glad it’s not more than 20% but
sad that it’s not only 5 to 10%.
In an effort to not simply recap their podcast (go listen to
it!!) I am going to end here by saying that these two educators have tapped
into something I think a lot of us are concerned about. I hope you will take
the time to think about how you might be able to sneak personal
finance/financial literacy into your teaching – I know I will.
I’m really looking forward to catching up on both of their
blogs next summer! You?
Again:
Vicki Davis – CoolCatTeacher: http://www.coolcatteacher.com/
Brian Page – FinEdChat: http://finedchat.blogspot.com/
The stat that you posted about high school students- doesn't really surprise me but it surprises me at the same time. Does that make sense?
ReplyDeleteI think not having a finance class or an economics class required to graduate is necessary these days. The fact that it is not required now is evidence of tracking students and is kind of disgusting to me personally. I would have really liked to have taken a class like this in high school. I took one in 6th grade economics but I had no job and was a wee wittle whipper-snapper then- with no concept of money or finance. I am wondering if one would be more likely to find a finance class/some sort of budget creating education in a different demographic. In a school where mommy and daddy don't spoil their students and where a lot of students don't go to a post-secondary school. I'm guessing the stats for this would be even more disappointing.
I had never thought of this topic before- but I'm glad someone is bringing it to the forefront of discussions somewhere.
I'd be curious what the effect of self-reporting is on the 20% of teen interviewed planning to live at home because of financial literacy. In other countries, it's almost the norm for kids to live at home until 20-25 or at least until they're married at 15 in some countries, but that's another discussion entirely. I almost wonder if living at home IS the financially wise decision. Considering you're moving out of a place where everything's been taken care of for your whole life into a world where you're supposedly an adult, living at home could, at least in theory, provide a layer of scaffolding. Of course, if it just continues "business as usual" and there is no shift towards independence, this theory might fall flat.
ReplyDeleteOn a complete tangential note. When I was working at the science museum, we had the idea of having an interactive night for kids and parents centered around financial decisions and being an "informed consumer". Students could start out with a set number of "points" that they could spend to take part in different activities. Some are high-risk activities with a potential of a high payoff (lottery, for instance). Others, you can place your points in a trust and return 20 minutes later to have interest. Low-risk, safe bet. Students could spend points to do an activity and have nothing but the activity as payoff...lots of ideas. Perhaps now's the time to develop this.
Remember when Jeff said he wanted to be Vicki when he grows up? Yeah, I think we know why now.
ReplyDeleteThanks for showing me this, I wound up posting on his blog. I'm about to teach about budgeting in econ this week and I would probably fall into that 20% who are not confident in their budgeting skills. I was definitely now taught financial literacy.
And yet, I'm going to be teaching it. In Michigan, personal finance is a part of the jam-packed state standards for economics. The two topics, in practice, have surprisingly little in common and like Brian, I would like to see them as two separate required classes. Unfortunately, it might be hard to make that happen given the amount of requirements Michigan already has, but I'm working on it.
So many responses in my head, so little time... This is a topic we should continue talking about!!!
ReplyDelete