Carolina Classrooms | Financial Literacy

[Music] hi welcome to carolinaclassrooms i'm laura ivara learning how to manage money is an important life skill [Music] for younger students financial literacy means identifying different types of money understanding the values of different coins and paper money as they get older they learn about budgeting their needs versus wants and then how to plan and save for something like a car or a college education managing personal finances or making business decisions for a corporate budget opening a savings account for the first time or saving for something big like a college education financial literacy skills can mean the difference between success and filing for bankruptcy on this episode of carolina classrooms we'll examine programs and classes designed to teach students of all ages basic budgeting saving and other money management skills they will need to achieve financial independence students at ellery elementary school in orangeburg county are participating in the stock market game competing against other schools in south carolina their teacher says while they are learning about economics the teamwork skills they're building are just as important we see like one of our stops not doing good we decide whether we should keep it ourselves today me and my team we were looking at our stocks and all of our shares in the stock market game and we were seeing if we were going to invest or sell any of our stocks and we were just looking at all the stocks to see what we want to really invest in well competing stock market game with me and my friends we competed and we didn't have any experience with stocks before this and it's an incredible experience to learn we're in 49 275 the stock market game is is it's actually nationwide but we have the south carolina version of it where they compete against schools all over the south all over south carolina excuse me and they try to buy and sell stock of course and make make a profit and so the team that makes the profit at the end of the term which is april 15th just around tax day then they get to go to a big function and they get all the bragging rights for that year so it's teaches them about investing and a lot of adults don't even know about the stock market so this they're getting an opportunity that many adults may not get to have they have the action they start off with a hundred thousand dollars and they have to purchase a minimum of 10 shares of a particular company and then they decide whether they want to keep it or sell it if it's doing well if it's doing poorly then they'll sell it everything is getting affected by the the conflict between russia so we have to make wise decisions we learned about how stocks they go up and how do they go down and what should we invest in and what should we not invest in financial literacy is making smart financial decisions being knowledgeable about banking saving investing and money for college is being able to manage your finances effectively in order to be productive i teach all the way from kindergarten to eighth grade for my elementary for kindergarten and first grade we learn you know what the value of like a quarter is and pennies and i start with that for third through six there is actually a financial literacy simulation called vault and it is through everfi and so i make make sure that the students do that exercise and i'm there as an assistant you know to facilitate them getting through that and it teaches the basics of what a budget is what is saving different types of banks and that kind of thing and then for middle school seventh and eighth grade they do a program called future smart and is funded by mass mutual and they actually get a financial literacy certification and then i have my eighth grade team doing the stock market game we learned about successful budgeting and saving and spending what you need to spend it showed me responsible decisions about what i want to need it's important that they have the skills at an early age so that when they get older they can make smart financial decisions i have experienced that myself when you get to college they're going to throw different credit card offers at you and you need to be able to decide whether that is a good idea or not if we see like one of our stops um not doing good we decide whether we should keep it ourselves yeah it's a group effort so how do you when you reach a disagreement how do you work that out because i'm sure you've had come across somewhere we've had plenty we usually just do like a majority vote you have a majority vote right now i think we're doing pretty good we really work like side by side we have really good teamwork um we don't make make any decisions unless we all agree upon it so we we have to have good teamwork to get get to what's done soft skills are so important i'm in career and technology education so i get to see what the industry is looking for and i've heard many employers say yeah they can do the skill work of the job but their their social skills leave a lot to be desired so anything that so anything that can produce good teamwork being on time time management making smart decisions your attitude those are the most important things because you can be skilled at whatever you do but if you can't work with your teammates then you're useless so those are the things that they learn you'll hear my students say that they don't buy or sell without the consensus of everyone and so that was the base they started that from the beginning i didn't have to tell them that that each person is important in a group there's not one person that makes a decision by themselves and you find that in the workforce so if you have to work with a team and yeah sure you may know everything but everybody brings something different to the table and we have to appreciate the diversity students in grades 4 through 12 can participate in the stock market game competitions like this get students excited about the content and increase their retention of the concepts they're learning at central high school in chesterfield county darren kirkley teaches his students about financial literacy with hands-on career-focused examples this year in this class i've been doing the work based class which is where i create posts for the discover chesapeake county facebook page and i'll work with mr kirkley on that and we'll get together some ideas i'll put together the post and then we put it out whenever we think would be best i serve as our tourism director here for this county that we're in which is a part-time role because again tourism is not our number one product in this county but so i do that and then i'm able to bring those real life experiences in of what we do with our money finance budget all that grant programs i oversee all of our grant monies here so i can bring in those work based learning students teach them that and then show them real life that even here this is an important industry and how they can make applicable to their lives financial literacy is truly having an understanding of your money and your personal finance and how that's going to work and then seeing how your money that you have yourself plays into the overall ecosystem the economy of finance in general right and having an understanding of what role the individual plays in the overall society's role and how taxes stocks bonds all that stuff interacts with one another we offer four different courses and then a work based component as well but our four courses are intro to hospitality and tourism management lodging management event and entertainment management and travel and tourism management so they all fall within the hospitality and tourism cluster but they focus on different segments within the industry so depending on what course the kids take depends on what they're exposed to and what they learn about obviously in lodging that the focus is on types of lodging hotels motels bmvs um and even even airbnbs we can get into the home sharing aspect things of that nature then on the event and entertainment side we'll do everything from planning events such as a wedding or a corporate event at a hotel all the way to planning your own festival from a to z the most interesting thing i've learned in here definitely has to be what it takes to run and manage an event i remember when i was assigned it we got to choose what type of event we wanted i went with a music festival so i had to pick the artist i wanted to be there i had to get sponsors i had to set up booth sizes i had to get power and water set up and that it really helps you to understand finance it teaches students a lot because in here you can get assignments for running your own event from marketing it to setting up sponsorship deals to even just making sure you have all the equipment like port-a-john's lighting sound all that stuff every class i teach has some kind of hands-on component everything from like i said plan your own event where you would have to lay out the entire budget for the event everything you're going to book entertainment venues food and beverage costs all that um all the way to um in the travel class they'll act as like their own travel agent for someone and be given a budget how much money they're going to spend and look at that aspect of the cost of travel both domestically and internationally like just traveling where you're going to stay at like the how you're going to travel whether it's like air rail like coach anything like that if you're especially if you're like a travel agent you're playing that for somebody you need to take their budget to an account and even if you're just planning to travel yourself you really need to take into account your budget and what you're going to spend and everything like that you have to like put hands on everything because other people just don't know what tsa will go through what you need to travel like what you need to carry after you like get your flights your hotels for like any other things you want to do besides that in the intro class they'll they actually build their own restaurant so that's where we cover a lot of the food and beverage aspect of it so they'll have to do everything from menu design to pitch a location but we can do like a market analysis of where it's best to locate that business and then justify why they chose that and things of that nature people will come from different other states like murder beaches for example they'll come like of summertime generate a lot of money half of the people be like tourism like tourists just come and drop by that's like a lot of money due to like them just even stopping by spending money at a gas station just getting money or just like buying food chips and stuff like that so basically all that money just revenue generates like more accommodations we can just make more things come through our whole entire progress with that on the travel and tourism side it's everything related just like it says to travel and tourism so we'll cover everything from airlines to cruise ships to international travel a lot of things that a lot of students at this age are not exposed to so just a lot of the aspects of travel and tourism and promoting a destination or getting visitors to come to an area definitely learn about cruise ships um you know you just think about like a boat you don't think about what all necessarily goes into it like the planning especially if it's like themed you know they have a lot of staff like way more than i i'd imagine and with that there's different contracts and things and i was very surprised to learn about what all they had to do just to make it function you know some of them um you signed for like extended amounts of time to stay on the boat and things like that just like the hours these students are taught things all the way from the lower level of like the um the individual side of it they're given that hands-on experience with their own budget their own finance their own money their some of the activities they're given you know a set dollar amount that they have to stay within but then we can go larger level larger economy size and look at the impact that travel and tourism has on the overall economy here in south carolina like being the number one industry you know when covet happened obviously that had big impacts on our industry and how that affected it so we had those discussions about taxes and revenue and how people lost jobs and how how the industry bounced back but how we the way we bounced back wasn't necessarily sustainable and how you know the 15 20 an hour for a frontline employee sounds great but is that sustainable long term for the economy and things of that nature so i think it's really giving them opportunities to see that and to interact from the personal level all the way up to big scales having these things in these classes you get to learn about like the hotel management you get to learn about the different classes that are taught you get to have those experiences from a person who's actually done it and knows what they're talking about and teaching so when you do graduate and like go to university or anything like that you have an idea of what they're talking about and you have more experience than you would have if you hadn't taken any of the classes tourism and hospitality would be a good good industry to look into got to be smart with it though like financial otherwise like just it's really basically common sense with how you spend how you really should regulate your money taking these classes has definitely changed the way that i view managing my money because when i was younger i used to not look at it as much of a big deal but now that i'm older i see how much money plays a role in everything and i'm more than likely going to start investing or saving my money now each each course within our curriculum i find some way of intertwining the the personal relationship to that and so it'll be anything from the discussion of the the stocks or the taxes that individuals pay when they go out to restaurants like taxes obviously play a big role in finance in general and understanding how that works and understanding um like when you do when you're a 1099 employee and things of that the kids necessarily don't even know what that means but how you're going to have to pay taxes out of that when you do freelance work and we talk about influencers travel bloggers all that kind of stuff and how that is great revenue stream but then you have to pay taxes on if if you're running your own business and all that kind of stuff so across the board whether it's run your own restaurant scenario plan your own festival look at these stocks and bonds let's talk about a travel blogger that a convention investors bureau may bring in to their destination we go into those discussions about you know where how those taxes go into how you have to yeah you got that ten thousand dollar check but you're gonna also pay the tax on that ten thousand dollars at the end of the year and how to financially be ready for that and so it's you know great way for them to give them real life examples of something they may be interested in doing being a wedding planner but what the implications are long term for that for career and financial growth and all that sc economics provides resources and professional development opportunities for teachers who want to incorporate financial literacy into their curriculum no matter what grade level or subject they teach sc economics is a non-profit organization housed in colombia but we serve the entire state k-12 educators our mission is to teach teachers how to teach economics and personal finance through our workshops webinars resources and coaching that i get to do with teachers one-on-one this professional development helps teachers strengthen their content knowledge or new teachers to learn that basic content knowledge so that they feel comfortable and able to teach it to students across the state we had one of our in-person workshops we're really excited to bring those back for 2022 and so the economics workshop was called economics everywhere and it featured ways to incorporate economics in all different subjects and so we looked at how to incorporate economics in english math elective science social studies and that included portions of personal finance especially in the math part but also personal finance can be woven throughout as well we are here for professional development south carolina essay economics puts it on for the master financial literacy teachers and others that may be interested in it and it's to help us incorporate financial literacy across the curriculums we've got kindergarten all the way through high school with us here today but i will tell you i have a high school background megan has an elementary and middle school background we can make all of these things work and i will tell you we're going to do some children's literature today i used to make my 17 and 18 year old high school seniors come sit in a reading circle with me so all of these things can very much be transposed from either grade level and hopefully you guys will see in all subjects i've been hearing today and we've been working with interactive activities most of those where i can not only incorporate financial literacy but i can also allow the students to play and have lots of fun as we learn i teach at lonnie b nelson i teach in the ace magnet program and i teach kindergarten our program ace is the academy for civic engagement and we focus on government economics and service learning so economics is a big piece of our classroom our kids have jobs which they earn on income they pay bills it's a little um less you know aggressive in terms of like what they pay for kindergarten because we are just starting them out and they purchase their supplies so we give them like their allotment but if they waste their glue they have to buy another one and so we teach them those things and so we talk about um really focusing on like saving and spending and those things and talking about wants and needs so one of the things especially in kindergarten you know a lot of them don't have a lot of experience with money and so we talk about like okay if you spend all your money on this little trinket from the store you're not gonna have money if you don't have a glue stick so we've had to kind of adjust and talk about loans because some of them like they need the glue stick so we've had to say oh you had to take out a loan this week so you're not going to get to go shopping because if you have these expenses and so we kind of have had to talk about some of those things because they don't really understand living expenses and things like that so it's kind of like really putting that real life experience in the classroom so i came to get ideas and strategies to take back and work further in the economics piece for my kids i've been learning all kinds of different like games and ways to integrate the especially those um terms like producer and consumer because some of those things are really hard for kids to understand and it's hard for them to even put like they don't spend a lot of their money they don't see a lot of that real world um you know and they might think about saving for something but for a lot of kids it just it just shows up like i just want this and it comes and so um we played a game where we were talking about the um you know when we were saving for something and rolling the dice to kind of catch up and then thinking about too like real life things like it money doesn't just pour in you have to understand that things happen and sometimes you don't get the money or you have to spend it on something else and even some of those things like opportunity costs and things like that like really helping the kids understand like when you have money like that gives you the power to decide like which product are you going to purchase and then what are you giving up and so um we've also done some things like with products and talking about consumers and producers and so we can tie that in like i said with my market day and and so i'm just excited to take some of these things back to my classroom and really help especially a lot of it you know it is so versatile you can use it in high school or even in kindergarten our students are not prepared financially they don't have the skills they don't have the mindset the behavioral mindset to be able to be successful financially they're getting into debt they're falling into payday loans so the goal in that aspect is to give them that security and confidence so that they can focus on their future and not how am i going to pay this bill they're going to be able to say i can pay this bill and continue to be successful on a personal level as well beyond and focus on other things that they need to focus on so for the students i do a multi-level approach i work very hard to not only connect it to them currently to their academics but also future so we also do real world and academics so we discuss how ratios plays into financial literacy how analyzing and understanding evidence and text incorporates into financial literacy so a lot of cross-curricular incorporation there as well to build that value and purpose and then we relate it to the real world because many of them um they might want to go to college or they're looking to have a car or a job so we bring those real world in so that as they move forward into high school they're prepared and they can start thinking about what a budget is what insurance is and be more prepared as they move forward south carolina economics has helped with with so many resources the webinars these in-person events are just great to get with other other teachers and find out what they're doing in their classes and take ideas from other people and and apply it to my class and that's one of the best things i get out of it is just the camaraderie and the chance to talk to their teachers that teach the same subject i'm with palmetto unified school district which is within the south carolina department of corrections i teach mathematics and financial literacy oh it's extremely important especially for my students who are they're in a re-entry facility so they'll be returning into society soon so it's equipped in students in general especially mine to be financial literate so they can function in society and make wiser decisions as it pertains to finances their family and being able to sustain themselves as well as creating generational wealth so i'm in manning high school again it's within department of corrections and in this setting our students are preparing to return to their homes and so the challenges and barriers they face are enormous in terms of the amount of time they've been incarcerated it ranges from let's say 20 25 years to possibly to three years so it's a range so they're faced with many barriers to include identity theft for example some of them may have experienced that while being incarcerated and not being financially literate in terms of knowing how to protect themselves even in that environment for example they could have put a freeze on their credit while they were incarcerated things like that so those are some of the things that we discuss and discuss them requesting their credit report even why they're incarcerated so before they're released they can kind of uh you know get try to get some things back on track if necessary or they can identify if they were in fact uh taking you know or victims of identity theft that's just one thing that really stands out in that environment but preparing them and teaching them how to budget how to save some of them actually do have jobs while they're in our facility or they are prepared and set up you know to start working when they leave so teaching them how to manage their money wisely some of them will have to pay fines and so forth when they leave so teach them how to manage and balance that along with the necessities that they need in life so budgeting saving helping them plan for transportation costs and other things is essential to their um survival it um definitely helps with our recidivism rate preparing them and equipping them with the knowledge that they need to be successful when they return to society we hear all the time from our local community partners with banks and statewide that they often have customers who come to them and don't have those basic skills of understanding the importance of having not only a checking account but also a savings account and not accessing that savings account constantly but having that as an emergency fund and so helping us build that community of understanding the importance of emergency funds and the importance of savings and why we always save for that rainy day because it can so often happen the ability to have that kind of safety net and that concept of that safety net instilled in our students as early as possible can only have success for our communities in the future teaching financial literacy is more of a life skill this is a skill that they will need to be successful professional development events like this allow teachers to discuss and collaborate on ideas for lessons with other teachers from other districts for more information visit their website sconomics.org thanks for joining us we'll be back on tv in april you can find more education stories from around the state on our website carolinaclassrooms.org

2022-03-22 12:49

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