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To be innovative you have to go beyond the textbook.
You have to interact with the students and know their strengths and weaknesses,
so I have to be very much attuned to who's sitting in front of me
and how to inspire them and to make it come alive to them.
One of my best activities is to give them a country
and for them to examine what makes that country
tick, and what the economics are, what the political system--
they love it; it's learning at the same time that they're having fun.
They have to have fun, because if they're not having fun,
they tune you right out. I think there's a lot of teachers out there
that have wonderful ideas.
My first advice, I guess, to my fellow teachers, is to think outside of the box,
go look for money, you'll find it. And
then once you get the funds, implement those programs
that's going to make that learning fun. Last year I was able to write a grant:
field trip to a local bank-- a lot of our children have never even step foot in a bank--
twenty dollars apiece, and a bus ride to Wells Fargo.
They opened up savings accounts and if you ask them today,
some of them have some balances in there so they've been continuing to deposit.
They can use those skills
that I taught in the classroom and apply it in real life.
That, often, is enough.
First, I try to relate a lot of my lessons to the daily life, from
making a purchase of a smartphone; they all have it. Some of them do have cars, or are
getting the first licenses.
There's this persuasive writing piece where I try to tell them to convince their parent
if they could use the family car responsibly, and what you would do to convince your parent,
or how you would contribute economically to pay for that. I'm hoping to instill in them
the basic lessons they'll use in adult life.
I mean, I feel it's a hundred percent important that
every student have some basic fundamentals of economics.
100 percent of our students are going to have to make financial decisions,
so why not teach them?
We need a citizenry that's
educated in economic and financial literacy, it's so clear to me
that it's an imperative.