High School Business and Personal Finance Teachers podcast

Welcome to the 10th episode of The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters. This 10th episode of the podcast features an interview with Caroline Swank, Business Department Chair at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado.

Listen to the podcast now, by clicking below. Or, subscribe to the podcast now via Apple’s iTunes. You can also find the podcast in whatever podcast app you prefer.

The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters is designed to interview teachers about how they got started teaching, tips and tricks for teaching business, marketing, and personal finance to high school students, and how teachers use Virtual Business simulations in their classrooms.

Stay tuned for more episodes of the podcast coming soon! Please help us spread the news about this new podcast. Thank you!

If you’re a high school business, marketing, or personal finance teacher, we’d love to interview you for the podcast. Please send us an email at [email protected]

Welcome to the ninth episode of The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters. This ninth episode of the podcast features an interview with Maureen Ginley, VP of Operations at Knowledge Matters. Maureen discusses everything teachers and CTSO advisors need to know about the annual Virtual Business Challenges hosted by Knowledge Matters.

Listen to the podcast now, by clicking below. Or, subscribe to the podcast now via Apple’s iTunes. You can find the podcast in whatever podcast app you prefer.

The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters is designed to interview teachers about how they got started teaching, tips and tricks for teaching business, marketing, and personal finance to high school students, and how teachers use Virtual Business simulations in their classrooms.

Stay tuned for more episodes of the podcast coming soon! Please help us spread the news about this new podcast. Thank you!

If you’re a high school business, marketing, or personal finance teacher, we’d love to interview you for the podcast. Please send us an email at [email protected]

Welcome to the eighth episode of The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters. This eighth episode of the podcast features an interview with Bruce Wilder, a 28-year veteran teacher who taught at Mesquite High School in Mesquite, Texas.

Listen to the podcast now, by clicking below. Or, subscribe to the podcast now via Apple’s iTunes. You can find the podcast in whatever podcast app you prefer.

The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters is designed to interview teachers about how they got started teaching, tips and tricks for teaching business, marketing, and personal finance to high school students, and how teachers use Virtual Business simulations in their classrooms.

Stay tuned for more episodes of the podcast coming soon! Please help us spread the news about this new podcast. Thank you!

If you’re a high school business, marketing, or personal finance teacher, we’d love to interview you for the podcast. Please send us an email at [email protected]

Welcome to the seventh episode of The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters. This seventh episode of the podcast features an interview with Julie Zalla and Jacqueline Evola, EVOLA, business and marketing teachers, at West Bloomfield High School in West Bloomfield, MI.

Listen to the podcast now, by clicking below. Or, subscribe to the podcast now via Apple’s iTunes. You can find the podcast in whatever podcast app you prefer.

The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters is designed to interview teachers about how they got started teaching, tips and tricks for teaching business, marketing, and personal finance to high school students, and how teachers use Virtual Business simulations in their classrooms.

Stay tuned for more episodes of the podcast coming soon! Please help us spread the news about this new podcast. Thank you!

If you’re a high school business, marketing, or personal finance teacher, we’d love to interview you for the podcast. Please send us an email at [email protected]

Welcome to the sixth episode of The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters. This sixth episode of the podcast features an interview with Andrew Nelson, a teacher at Granada Hills Charter High School in Granada Hills, California.

Listen to the podcast now, by clicking below. Or, subscribe to the podcast now via Apple’s iTunes. You can find the podcast in whatever podcast app you prefer.

The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters is designed to interview teachers about how they got started teaching, tips and tricks for teaching business, marketing, and personal finance to high school students, and how teachers use Virtual Business simulations in their classrooms.

Stay tuned for more episodes of the podcast coming soon! Please help us spread the news about this new podcast. Thank you!

If you’re a high school business, marketing, or personal finance teacher, we’d love to interview you for the podcast. Please send us an email at [email protected]

Welcome to the fifth episode of The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters. This fifth episode of the podcast features an interview with Dan Winkeler, a teacher at Seckman High School in Imperial, Missouri.

Listen to the podcast now, by clicking below. Or, subscribe to the podcast now via Apple’s iTunes. You can find the podcast in whatever podcast app you prefer.

The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters is designed to interview teachers about how they got started teaching, tips and tricks for teaching business, marketing, and personal finance to high school students, and how teachers use Virtual Business simulations in their classrooms.

Stay tuned for more episodes of the podcast coming soon! Please help us spread the news about this new podcast. Thank you!

If you’re a high school business, marketing, or personal finance teacher, we’d love to interview you for the podcast. Please send us an email at [email protected]

Transcript of Episode 5 of the High School Business and Personal Finance Teachers Podcast

Host: Welcome to the fifth episode of the high school business and personal finance teachers podcast Stay tuned for our interview with Dan Winkeler, a teacher at Seckman High School in Imperial Missouri.

Stay tuned for the interview.

Virtual Business simulations are the leading cloud based educational simulations for teaching business personal finance and marketing at the high school level. There are currently eight different virtual business simulations available: retail, hotel, restaurant, management, personal finance, accounting, sports and entertainment marketing, and fashion. Virtual Business simulations are used in one-third of the high schools in the US. You can learn more about Virtual Business simulations at www.knowledgematters.com.

Welcome back to the High School Business and Personal Finance Teachers podcast sponsored by Knowledge Matters. This is the podcast where we talk to high school business, personal finance, and marketing teachers about how they got started teaching and tips and tricks they have for teaching business and personal finance to high school students. I want to welcome our latest guest Dan Winkeler, a teacher at Seckman High School in Imperial Missouri. Dan welcome to the podcast.

Dan: Well thanks for having me Jeff.

Host: What classes do you currently teach.

Dan: Currently this past school year, I taught a couple sections of computer applications. Several sections of personal finance. And then we just instituted an AP economics class this past year.

Host: How did you first get into teaching?

Dan: I actually got into teaching compliments of my high school math teacher. Believe it or not they went through and he was actually there for me before school. You know I needed some help with some math and he stopped what he was doing, responding to emails and all that sort of stuff that teachers do in the morning, and set some time aside to where he could actually help me understand the concepts from the previous day on the homework. That’s just kind of what set it off. I really like helping people and I wanted to kind of pay it forward as he was doing for me.

Host: And you decided to pursue a teaching degree?

Dan: Yeah I actually when I graduated high school I decided I wanted to be actually a high school math teacher. Much like he was. And when I got out and had observation hours and different things, I realized I wanted to make a greater impact and I like technology a lot more and still wanted to teach and found the business side of education was going to be where I felt like I could make my greatest impact on students.

Host: Have you always taught personal finance since you started teaching?

Dan: My first two years of teaching I was actually in an elementary school setting where I was dealing with computers and a little bit of cross-curricular with their agenda and math teacher. But over the last four years, this upcoming year will be my fifth year that I’ll have personal finance.

Host: And so what’s a typical school day for you?

Dan: For me it’s huge. I usually have more personal finance classes than anything else especially over the last four or five years. You know in the state of Missouri it is required for all students to graduate when they graduate in order for them to graduate they have to have some sort of personal finance class. So our district has gone through and said that pretty much if you are a sophomore we’re going to make sure it’s on your schedule that you can take it.

So I see a lot of sophomores throughout the course of the day with personal finance.

Host: What have you done since you started teaching personal finance. Are you using a specific textbook What have you figured out in terms of the day-to-day curriculum and lesson plans? What what’s been working for you and maybe even if there’s something that hasn’t worked for you.

Dan: Oh sure. When I first started my very first semester teaching, you know being the new teacher not really knowing the curriculum, I kind of held on to the book as if it was the Bible. And it was Personal Financial Literacy by Joan Ryan. One of those first few editions of it before they started coming out with new ones. And I kind of held that one very near and dear to me throughout that first semester and even that first year just to make sure I was doing everything that the rest of the teachers in my department were doing.

Ever since then I have found that I don’t use the textbook actually. I found that the students want to hear more of the real world side of things. How did I survive? How did I make it to where I am today and in terms of my financials trying to get them to see what the real world life is going to be like outside of you know the spine of a book and outside the four walls of the classroom. So I usually try to bring in a lot of real world examples. I bring in a couple of people from the banks around the surrounding area that are willing to talk to the students about how to open up a checking or savings account, and the dangers of credit cards just so that they can hear it from somebody else. So it’s not like I’m just the teacher standing up there and telling them all this that they may or may not believe it.

Host: Sure. And do you have any projects or things that you’ve found that the students respond to really well.

Dan: Oh absolutely. When it comes to when we get to our budgeting unit you know they really kind of have this hard time because when students get money from mom or dad you know they go out and spend it right away. But when it’s their own money, they try and hang on to it for as long as possible and they don’t spend it. So I have a budgeting project too where they’re they’ve saved up so much of their own money, and they have to plan a vacation and they can either go on vacation by themselves, or they can go out with one other person in their class and do kind of a project and they have to stick to their budget. They have to be gone so many days, and they have to do so many activities per per day. They have to eat at a restaurant as opposed to the hotel. And kids find that they actually enjoy it, because many of them mom and dad are just planning the vacation and taking them on it and it’s kind of a shock to see what they where they end up going because of the financial constraints that go with it.

Host: So you give them a budget is what you’re saying.

Dan: Yeah they have you know a set dollar value depending on if they if they’re traveling by themselves. They have one set dollar value if they partner up with somebody else in that class. I think I gave them you know a couple extra hundred dollars to go on their trip.

Host: Where do you look if you’re needing a lesson plan or specific info about a topic. Are there resources you have found or places you look to to bring information into the classroom?

Dan: Oh yeah I am actually very active on Twitter. #Busedu hashtag. They have a Twitter chat. I think it’s twice a month. The first and third month on Tuesdays.

We usually get together and share out a whole bunch of different ideas on topics and various different things. On the Facebook side, I’m part of a business educators group that you know every now and again somebody will make a post of, “Hey I’m getting ready to teach a digital media class. Does anybody have any topics?” I put out there earlier this school year that I was trying to change up how I was going about the budget unit, and that’s how I actually started that budgeting project that I mentioned earlier.

Host: Sure. And I think I actually found you through the Twitter chat.

Dan: That wouldn’t surprise me.

Host: Given your experience thus far are there any lessons that you’ve learned if your students are having a rough day to get them back on track?

Dan: Sometimes I’ve found that the kids actually like coming to my classroom because I usually try and lighten the mood and crack some jokes and different things. In their eyes, I’m an elective class so it gives them that break from their normal core classes throughout the day. I think if they’re having a bad day, I can usually tell, and you know at some point I’ll go over and kind of lean over or ask them if they’re having a bad day or not and kind of work with them on making sure that if they need that time and space to disconnect for a couple of minutes that they can do that. I just want to make sure that they don’t fall too far behind.

And then we have kind of like a little activity period or advisory period where if they have that bad day, I’ll pull them in and sit down with them one-on-one to make sure that even if they were a little disconnected to make sure that they got the information that I was trying to review or that we were discussing in class and make sure that they get back on track. So they are ready for tomorrow or the next day.

Host: Sure. You said that the personal finance classes at your high school and in your state are required. Do you have to do much selling to get students to take your class?

Dan: Not really. The counselors usually usually go through and make sure to schedule everybody during their class meetings in the spring. The counselors will sit down with them in the gym and go through and say OK you now you guys know you need to make sure to mark your core classes for next year.

And at this point go ahead and fill in the bubbles saying that you’re going to take personal finance as well.

That way we make sure that you get in there. And if it doesn’t work out because you’re taking band or gym or something else that we don’t lose sight of this. The counselors actually in our building do a very very good job at making sure that all of the sophomores get accounted for either first semester or second semester, and if for some reason they don’t end up taking it then they’re first on the list to make it junior year.

Host: When your students come into your class. How much of a sense of personal finance do most of them have.

Dan: It can vary. You know the area that I’m in there’s a lot of the socioeconomic status can vary depending on what side of the district that you’re on. So when they come into the building and especially in my classroom, I kind of do this very generic pre-assessment to see OK what do they know about just calculating hourly rates. What do they know about overtime, budgeting, banking, and all that sort of stuff. Each year even each class you know you have your peaks and valleys because nowadays kids are starting to learn about things at a much earlier age because of technology. They’re going out and finding things on their own.

Host: Do you find is there any any area where you find that students are really surprised whether it’s you know when they look at the paycheck and discover how much they have to pay in taxes? Or I’m just using this as an example. Is there any area that comes to mind for you that the students show a sense of surprise that they don’t know about bank reconciliations and just the overall banking side of money management.

Dan: Because they always see money coming into their wallet. And then when they pay money out at the store or at the restaurant but they don’t necessarily understand how to do the bookkeeping side of the finances - making sure that you know all of your money actually is accounted for. So you don’t go to the store and swipe your credit or debit card and it bounces back and say insufficient funds.

Host: Gotcha. And I take it from that. You teach them about reconciliation and how to manage a checkbook.

Dan: Yes that is usually what ends up taking the majority of our semester. I pretty much focus an entire month or six weeks on the basics of banking: how to write a check, how to fill out a deposit slip, your checkbook register, the endorsements that go on the backside of the check, filling out your checkbook, getting your bank statement, and then actually doing your bank reconciliation at the end.

Host: Gotcha. You mentioned the budgeting exercise for vacation. Are there other projects that you have run across that have really captured the attention of your students that you would want to mention?

Dan: The banking packets - I call them packet’s but they’re actually projects. They get this scenario: here’s your budget, and here’s your list of transactions that you’ve made over the course of a couple of weeks or maybe even a month or more. You need to document them appropriately in your checkbook register. You then need to write the appropriate checks and fill out the appropriate deposit slips, and then I give them their bank statement and they go through and they have to fill out their bank reconciliation.

I usually have a couple of questions after they have gone through and had every dollar value accounted for to where you know, “Ok you’ve got some money leftover at the end of the month.

Well one of them usually uses some sort of technology. Somebody tried to even find a car on Craigslist as well.

Host: That’s great. So have you used Virtual Business simulations with your students?

Dan: I actually did during my student teaching semester, but we have not had a chance to incorporate it into our curriculum just yet. I’m kind of hoping that the Department of Education here in Missouri can help change that. In the next couple of weeks there’s some new proposed personal finance standards that are currently being reviewed by the public. Technology integration is is one of the sticking points, and hopefully we can try and get that within the next year or two going.

Host: I just would add that they are eligible for Perkins funding.

So that’s all the questions I had is there anything we didn’t discuss or any final words of wisdom that you might have for someone who’s listening who’s a high school personal finance teacher or teaches business at the high school level.

Dan: Sure. You know my words of advice is you know just make sure that the students are engaged in some way shape or form. I know that tends to be one of the hardest things with technology these days. But try and embrace it the best that you can. If you’re in a computer lab, find projects and then just make sure that the projects are as real world as possible. Growing up, I learned best when it wasn’t from a textbook. So that’s kind of why I ditched my textbook in the classroom and just tried to use as many real-world examples as possible. I found that the students are much more engaged and willing to participate. It helps build the relationships with the students on a much deeper level, and where they come back and want to share what they’ve found. Once they hit that real world and have to do the banking on thier own.

Host: That’s great advice. Well again we’ve been speaking with Dan Winkeler, a teacher at Seckman High School in Imperial Missouri. Dan thanks for doing this interview.

Dan: Oh no thank you.

Welcome to the fourth episode of The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters. This fourth episode of the podcast features an interview with Gerri Kimble, high school business, marketing, and personal finance teacher at Hoover High School in Hoover, Alabama. See below for a transcript of the interview.

Listen to the podcast now, by clicking below. Or, subscribe to the podcast now via Apple’s iTunes. You can find the podcast in whatever podcast app you prefer.

The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters is designed to interview teachers about how they got started teaching, tips and tricks for teaching business, marketing, and personal finance to high school students, and how teachers use Virtual Business simulations in their classrooms.

Stay tuned for more episodes of the podcast coming soon! Please help us spread the news about this new podcast. Thank you!

If you’re a high school business, marketing, or personal finance teacher, we’d love to interview you for the podcast. Please send us an email at [email protected]

Transcript of Episode 4 of the High School Business and Personal Finance Teachers Podcast

Host: Welcome to the fourth episode of the High School Business and Personal Finance Teachers podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters. This is the podcast where we interview high school teachers who teach business personal finance financial literacy and marketing. Stay tuned for our interview with Gerri Kimble, business teacher at Hoover High School in Hoover Alabama.

Stay tuned for the interview.

Virtual Business simulations are the leading cloud based educational simulations for teaching business personal finance and marketing at the high school level.

Gerri: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Host: Sure. So what classes do you currently teach.

Gerri: Right now I’m teaching a course called career preparedness which is a state mandated course and it is designed for ninth graders and it goes into three areas – technology, career and academic planning, and personal finance. And believe it or not that’s all in one course and that course is required for every ninth grader in the state of Alabama. And I also teach one of our newest courses which is Internet marketing which goes into social and digital marketing. So it’s a pretty exciting school year for me.

Host: That sounds great. So how did you first get interested and get into teaching.

Gerri: Well I’ve always wanted to be a teacher but I graduated high school right when the dot com era was flourishing and at that time I’m like you know I’m not going to go into teaching, I’m going to study information systems and make a lot of money. So I went on to business school and I majored in information systems and I worked in industry for a little while, and I just I wasn’t very fulfilled so to speak. So I was young and had no obligation. So I decided I’m going to do what I want to do.

So I went back to school and got a degree in education and started my first job.

Host: That’s great. Have you always taught business marketing and personal finance.

Gerri: Yes I have. And I’ve been doing that for 11 years.

Host: What’s a typical school day for you?

Gerri: Well we are a very large high school. We have seven classes a day and there are forty eight minute classes, so we don’t have a whole lot of time. It’s not like a lot of schools do the block schedule where you are with students for an hour and a half. So we really have to use that 48 minute just really dive in and engage students. The good thing about the 48 minutes is you. There’s not a lot of time for them to kind of daze off. They know they’re only with you for 48 minutes. So they seem to be engaged a little bit more, I believe, than in a block schedule setting. I have upperclassmen at the beginning of the day, and I have my younger students in the later part of the day. In the classroom, we really jump right in. We use all of those 48 minutes because we really have to.

Host: Given your 11 years of teaching business and marketing and personal finance, do you have any tips or tricks that you would care to share for any other teachers who might be listening.

Gerri: Just passion. Having that passion and being excited about business every day, that is passed along to the student. I have young students and old students who came into me last week, or maybe it was earlier this week, when Snapchat went public. I had students from all of my classes coming in, like I wouldn’t know. But they were so excited coming into me saying “Ms. Kimble Snap went public. We’re going to watch it, and we’re going to figure out kind of how they’re doing and all of that. That’s something that I talk about a lot, but I like that the students in their own lives are watching the stock market and love personal finance and marketing and business just as much as I hope that are portrayed in class. It’s really about passion. Loving what you do, and building those relationships with students. They appreciate the subject matter and being in your class a whole lot more when you when you do those things with them.

Host: Are there any lessons that you’ve learned along the way on what to do if your students are kind of having a rough day and you need to get them engaged. How do you do that?

Gerri: You know there are some days. And we all have those days. We, as teachers, also have rough days. One thing that I that I’ve always done with students is have empathy. Let them know that I know there are days when you’re not going to feel your best and you’re not going to want to give it your all. Or you’re just in a bad mood. I get it. We all have those days.

If it’s a class feeling, like they all come in for whatever reason, it’s a day where I know as a teacher we’re not going to get a whole lot done. I tailor my lesson to that type of engagement, and we may not get a whole lot done that day. And that’s ok some days. That’s one thing I’ve learned with experience. Every day is not going to be 100 percent. As beautiful as that sounds. That’s not the real world. Students will not give you their all every day. You’ve got to be able to gauge that first of all and respond to that and react to that so that you know you can use that time efficiently get as much as you can out of students. And when you’re not able to get as much out of students you have to just call it a loss and start again the next day.

So I basically react and I react to the feelings.

I don’t push them to give me something that I know that I’m not going to get. That comes with experience. I remember as a new teacher I thought they’re going to give me 100 percent, and I just learned that that’s not true. That’s not realistic and you’ve got to be able to respond to that efficiently.

Host: Great. You mentioned the state mandated class that you teach but I assume that the other classes that you teach such as the Internet Marketing are electives. How do you market your own classes to students at your high school to get them interested in taking it.

Gerri: That’s a great question. We struggled with that for a while. And I would say struggle, but we didn’t have necessarily a brand for our department. And what happened is our school is a pretty progressive school. And at some point our district and our school became a one to one school. You know everyone got the technology, and business classes were now not just the business classes where you got to work on the computer. All of a sudden every class allowed you to use technology. We kind of lost our competitive edge in that way. So we had to respond to that. Several years ago we revamped our brand. We did everything from create a logo to get a solid business website established and great social media. That revolutionized the whole recruiting process for us. So now we have that strong web presence, that strong social media presence, and we’re using our students a whole lot more to gauge interest. When we have recruiting events such as when the middle schools come over to decide what classes they want to take, we don’t really do a lot of talking as teachers. We allow our students to do it because that’s who they want to hear from. We use our students, we use our web presence, and we use our social media presence, and we’ve done really well from that.

Host: I’m curious when your students come in the younger students do most of them have a sense of how business works. I know that you mentioned earlier you used the example of your students getting excited when Snapchat went public. When they first come into your class, what’s their level of knowledge.

Gerri: Very little. They don’t know a whole lot about business. Now a few of them have that entrepreneurial spirit.

But in general they really don’t have a clue. I think that’s great that we get to open the world of business to them. So no we don’t see a whole lot of business knowledge when they come in.

Host: Great. How do you use the Virtual Business simulations with your students?

Gerri: I actually I started using the sims 10 years ago. The way that worked was this state mandated course that I mentioned has been a different course every five years or so. About 10 years ago, when they introduced the course the personal finance part of it was new. So we looked at that, and I was in my early 20s myself and barely knew about personal finance. I was basically a kid. I was looking at how I can make this happen for students. Being a young person, I didn’t want to sit and talk about writing checks and interest rates and credit cards and all that. As a teacher, I did not know of a way to make that interesting for students.

When that happens, we go out and look for ways and resources that will help us make things a whole lot more fun for our students. That’s how I came across the Knowledge Matters. It was one of my colleagues who actually found it and we researched it and we were like oh this looks really really cool. So we purchased it like I said about 10 years ago. We use it every year.

The very first year, we bought it and we just got the personal finance version. But we liked the format so much that I purchased probably five more sims from Knowledge Matters to use to teach management and marketing as well.

As far as how I use it in my classroom, I’ll use the personal finance sim as an example.

As far as personal finance sim, I really use it to kick off my personal finance unit. I allow students to take a unit or take a lesson with a partner or with a small group, and I allow students to be the experts on that subject matter. And be the ones that introduce that subject matter to their peers. Obviously with my help. A lot of this they’ve never seen before. Them hearing this from someone their own age works wonders. It’s worked in my classroom for years.

I put the information in the students hands and let them run with it, and I’m there to kind of fill in the holes and clarify their understanding and things like that. I use it is as the basis of my personal finance unit in our freshman course. And then with my older classes, I try to use it the same way to introduce concepts. It’s the foundation for a lot of the concepts that I teach, and I build with projects on the lessons from Knowledge Matters.

Host: Do your students participate in any of the Virtual Business Challenges that we run each year.

Gerri: My first time doing that was last year. I’d seen it over the years and just didn’t quite understand what it was. And then last year our FBLA chapter had a couple of teams compete, and we thought that was pretty cool. And then this year we changed over to DECA. So we had a couple of those participating in the challenge with our DECA chapter. But we’re not too heavy on it yet. But we plan to do a whole lot more with it in the future because the students really like it.

Host: I know that you’re really active on Twitter. I know you take part in the #bizedu chat. How did you get involved in that.

Gerri: Oh that was several years ago. And like I said I teach in a very progressive school. All of my administrators are on Twitter. I wouldn’t say I was pushed into that space, but it’s kind of expected around here that you are active in social media - using social media for professional development. A few years ago I was out there looking for other business teachers on Twitter. I mean you can follow all kinds of people on Twitter, but I need it so my time isn’t wasted when I’m on social media.

I went out there and I was looking for business teachers, and all of a sudden I found this golden group of people who were sharing and communicating every day. So that’s kind of how I discovered the #busedu hash tag. Those people have basically become my friends over the years, and I’ve learned so much from that community since then. I highly recommend it by the way for any business teacher who isn’t on Twitter. Twitter has probably been my best PD that I’ve ever that I’ve ever done just continuous PD that I’ve ever done. It’s an amazing space. I think every business teacher should have some type of presence out there. There are a lot of teachers out there who are willing to share what they do and what works in their classroom. This is part of the reason I’m the teacher I am today.

Host: That’s all the questions that I had. I wondered if there is anything that we didn’t discuss or any final words of wisdom that you might offer for other high school business teachers who might be listening.

Gerri: I think the the biggest resource that we have as educators is each other. And I just encourage teachers to look at that area and use that social media space to get to know people outside your school, outside of your district. A lot of times we know a lot of teachers in our state, and that’s wonderful, but it really helps to hear from teachers from all over the nation and there are teachers in there who are not even from the US. So it’s really cool to learn from everyone and then also just joining professional organizations and getting to conferences and meeting these people in person. Like I said, I learn so much from teachers that I don’t see every day. So that would be my suggestion for business teachers who aren’t already doing that.

Host: We’ve been speaking with Gerri Kimble. Gerri teaches business marketing and personal finance at the Hoover High School in Hoover Alabama. And Gerri thanks for doing this interview. Thank

Gerri: Thank you Jeff.

Welcome to the third episode of The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters. This third episode of the podcast features an interview with Edward Flannery, economics and financial literacy teacher at Vernon Township High School in Vernon Township, New Jersey. See below for a transcript of the interview.

Listen to the podcast now, by clicking below. Or, subscribe to the podcast now via Apple’s iTunes.

The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters is designed to interview teachers about how they got started teaching, tips and tricks for teaching business, marketing, and personal finance to high school students, and how teachers use Virtual Business simulations in their classrooms.

Stay tuned for more episodes of the podcast coming soon! Please help us spread the news about this new podcast. Thank you!

If you’re a high school business, marketing, or personal finance teacher, we’d love to interview you for the podcast. Please send us an email at [email protected]

Transcript of Episode 3 of the High School Business and Personal Finance Teachers Podcast

Host: Welcome to the third episode of the High School Business and Personal Finance Teachers podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters.

Stay tuned for our interview with Edward Flannery who teaches economics and financial literacy as a social studies teacher at Vernon Township High School in Vernon Township, New Jersey. Stay tuned for the interview.

Virtual Business simulations are the leading cloud based educational simulations for teaching business personal finance and marketing at the high school level.

There are currently eight different virtual business simulations available: retail, hotel, restaurant, management, personal finance, accounting, sports and entertainment marketing, and fashion.

Welcome back to the Knowledge Matter podcast - the podcast where we talk to high school business and personal finance teachers about how they got started teaching and teaching tips and tricks they may have for teaching business or financial literacy to high school students

I want to welcome our latest guest Edward Flannery. Ed teaches economics and financial literacy as a social studies teacher at Vernon Township High School in Vernon Township New Jersey. Ed welcome to the podcast.

Ed: Hi thanks for having me.

Host: Sure. So can you tell us what classes you’re currently teaching that fall under financial literacy.

Ed: Yes. Right now I teach economics as a semester course and then in the spring that spills over into a financial literacy course.

Host:: How did you first get into teaching.

Ed: It was something I knew I wanted to do when I was a sophomore in high school. I had a few fantastic teachers at school in Sussex County - a school called Pope John. I had an opportunity to actually run a lesson for English class when I was a sophomore and just thought it was the most fun thing in the world. I just knew that I wanted to teach and have that experience.

Host: When you went to college did you know that you wanted to be a social studies teacher or did that kind of come later.

Ed: As a sophomore, I took sociology. It fit into my schedule so I took it. I thought that that was the most amazing class I’d ever taken because you would have a question and when you got to the answer it produced two more questions.

I just thought that was so fun. I knew I wanted to major in sociology and that would lead me towards teaching history and other social studies courses. So when I went to Montclair State and when I went and I went and declared as a sociology major pursuing education certification.

Host: Have you always taught social studies and sociology when you started teaching high school or was there other classes you taught?

Ed: Well when I was hired to teach in 2000 as a 23-year-old right out of college I was hired to teach world history and U.S. 1. Over the years, I’ve taught World History for 11 years. I’ve taught U.S. 2. Our school has a US 3 course. I taught a sociology of sports course. I’ve taught cultural geography and world religions.

About five or six years ago, the person that was teaching economics here was retiring, and I had just finished that summer reading Freakonomics and thought it was the most mind blowing fun thing I’d ever read. As he was on his way out, I asked the supervisor if I could get a shot at economics. He gave me a shot and I think it’s just so much fun to teach.

Host: That’s great. And so you fit financial literacy into that as well as economics. How’s that work for you?

Ed: I think it’s great because I think economics gives students a philosophical overview of supply and demand, microeconomics, and macroeconomics. Then in financial literacy, instead of going a mile wide, we go a mile deep. And we start to say, how do you interact with all this. How do you manage your money? I think it’s great that we get the the overview. We learn the rules of the game and then we talk about the position the students play in that game.

I think that’s a really really good partnership that we’ve built here at Vernon with those two course.

Host: Do you find in terms of the financial literacy part that most high school students are aware when they start the financial literacy section of how everything fits together? Whether it’s wages and buying insurance, etc. What’s the knowledge coming in do you find?

Ed: Where I’m fortunate is that while offer financial literacy in several different areas in our school, the one that I teach is only open to juniors and seniors. So by the time the kids get to me most of them have had a job, most of them have been saving money for a car or have purchased a car. They understand what it means to work, and they have questions about what are all these deductions on my paycheck. They understand that when you buy a car that’s not the end. You still have to put gas in it, you have to maintain it, and you have to get insurance. So they start getting introduced to a lot of concepts, and then you know there’s a lot of room to build.

But because they’re juniors and seniors, they’ve dabbled in it a little bit which I think is really good and allows us to get so much done. Then there are other things like when we talk about retirement, or we talk about estate planning, and making a will. Or what it’s going to be like when you have to pay your own taxes.

They definitely get big eyes because they get a sense that there’s a lot more out there that they haven’t been exposed to. And I think that’s interesting to see you how they react, “Like oh my gosh I didn’t know that - insurance specifically. When we talk about life insurance and health insurance. What does it mean? What kind of a bet are you placing. They think it’s fascinating just like how how crazy it is or how it works out. And then they ask great questions. I think that’s one of the main things too, and of course I like this because it’s practical. They’re free to ask questions and explore and get the answers they’re looking for. But I’m very fortunate that I always have a basis first.

Host: With your class planning and preparation, do you do that looking out a semester ahead? Do you do it weeks ahead? What’s the process for you in terms of putting the class together - the curriculum and the lesson plan?

Ed: When the course was first mandated, because after the collapse of 2008 a bunch of states jumped on him and said you know we’ve got to teach kids how to handle money, I was in the meeting where we developed the course. I had a big hand writing the curriculum and kind of looked at it from what would be practical. What do I wish I knew before I started making money that would help me out? We organized our curriculum in units from understanding things between education and employment through managing your income and taxes, and we broke everything down into six to eight week blocks and then each six to eight week block would be broken down into two or three weeks sets.

When I did my lesson planning - I just started a unit today on income earned income and taxes. We look out and say, “Ok, what are the things we need to accomplish? Where do we want to get to? And then breaking it down over a two week based on the goal that I want the kids to achieve

Host: We’ll talk about the Knowledge Matters Virtual Business sims in a moment, but I wondered are there tips or tricks or things that you’ve kind of learned along the way that you use to engage your students in economics and financial literacy?

Ed: Yeah. The biggest thing and I don’t know if it’s a tip or a trick but I consider the strategy to just help them to understand that it has unbelievable practical value. Every kid has been in a class where at some point they’ve thought, “When am I ever going to need this?” Financial literacy just doesn’t have that. Because no kid is in there thinking when am I ever going to have to use money or when am I ever going to have to save for something like that. It’s just know that it’s real.

I try to give them so many opportunities to connect it to their own relationship with money. I find that I don’t really have to press them that hard to get the work done, because they understand the course’s intrinsic value. So it goes above, “I need to get a grade or it’s a graduation requirement,” and it gets to, “This is an opportunity for me to explore things that are actually important.”

Last week, we did a lesson where they looked up a job they might be interested in the Occupational Outlook Handbook from the BLS.gov - Bureau of Labor Statistic. And I had students offering to do two or three reports. I have a student in my class who’s just auditing the class who did the work because he was like, “Oh, this is a really good opportunity for me to look something up.”

When kids can understand the practical value and how it applies to them, you just get out of their way and watch them work. And they get so excited to do things. That’s an advantage I have over other subjects where it might not seem as real, but I think financial literacy, driver’s ed, first aid, they’re everything. You have to get them. When the kids understand that, they just go.

Host: I just wanted to clarify what you said earlier so. So all graduating seniors at your school have to take the financial literacy class.

Ed: You don’t have to take it as a senior but in order to graduate it is a requirement.

Host: So in that case, you don’t have to go out and sell or market your class as some business teachers have to do.

Ed: I don’t have to talk them into taking financial literacy because they need it to graduate. But it’s offered in a couple of different departments, so letting them know that it’s partnered with economics which is a college prep level course if you are going to end up taking economics in college.

This is a good opportunity to get introduced to the field. Those are things that I do that I definitely have to get a message out about. And then next year we’re kind of switching around a little bit the way the courses are structured, and we’re introducing the ability to pursue college credits concurrently. Those are things I do make sure that I’m getting out and making sure students know is an option.

Some kids choose to take financial literacy online. I’ll just talk to them and say, “Yes that’s true. You may be able to get two and a half credits by taking this course online. This is your opportunity to have a knowledgeable adult who will talk to you and explain things to you and have conversations with you. And that might not be something you ever get again. You don’t want to skimp on that.” Those are those are conversations I definitely have to have with students.

Host: Do you remember how you first discovered or heard about the Knowledge Matters Virtual Business simulations?

Ed: We get promotional materials for different companies in our mailboxes. I had gotten one and another teacher in the business department who taught financial literacy had gotten them. We were talking about them. She ended up asking her business supervisor to order it so she could get a look at it. I signed on under her account just to test it out. And I thought it was so fun.

Host: Great. Can you tell me how you integrate the personal finance sim into your classes?

Ed: What I did was I took a look at all the different units which are excellent because they range from things like time management to getting insurance to retirement planning or buying a home. All practical things that people will experience during the course of their adult life.

And then I took a look at our curriculum and the way it was structured and there’s 18 units. And I was able to take the 18 units and reorganize them and line them up to fit with what I do. And then as we go through the chapters, when we finish the unit on education and advancement I’m able to use the education and advancement section. So in class I’ll say, “The homework for Friday is to go into the reading quiz in the simulation.”

So we use it as a supplement that they can work on at home, and there’s that quiz grade.

Host: That’s great. We run these Virtual Business Challenges in association with DECA and other CTOs such FCCLA. Do any of the students at your school participate in the Virtual Business Challenges that we run?

Ed: We haven’t done that yet but I’m kind of good friends with the tech advisor who is a business teacher over at another high school in our county and she had a student who participated in that challenge and actually went to the national competition. She said she thought it was great.

It was like a video game tournament you see on TV. She said it was outrageous to watch and fun. I’ve never been able to pull that off because of the semester nature of the course. Next year, as we transition to a full year model of economics with financial literacy threaded throughout the course. That would be something that I would love to do in the future especially after hearing another teacher talk about how valuable and awesome it was.

Host: That’s great. We’ll be doing we’ll the challenge in person at DECA ICDC in Anaheim in April so I know there are lots of students looking forward to doing that. Like you said, kind of like a videogame competition.

Ed: It’s definitely something I’m going to check out this year.

Host: Great. We we’re happy to hear that. That’s all of the questions that I had. Is there anything else that we didn’t discuss or any final words of wisdom that you would offer for other high school teachers who are teaching financial literacy or economics?

Ed: I just say that economics has had a reputation as the dismal science.

In the last couple of years, because of books like Freakonomics or The World Is Flat, or Planet Money there’s a lot of great podcasts out there where they talk about economics and relating it to the world. Students are really interested in it and they can they can turn onto it really quickly.

The number of students that I’ve had come in and say they want to major in science or English and then they end up throwing in a minor in economics because they see it as having almost a behavioral psychology feel to it. Economics can be so fun and so great.

Financial literacy - the opportunities that I’ve had to talk to kids and teach them how to do their taxes, and help them apply for colleges. You get an opportunity not just to teach a class where you help children develop a lifelong relationship and understanding of money - as a tool that you have to learn to work with.

You have the opportunity to get in there and have these teachable moments that spring off of it where you can really help kids achieve. It just lends itself to these fantastic opportunities for real teachable moments. Most teachers that’s why we got into it. We saw those movies in the 80s that inspired us and thought, “I want to do that.” And maybe we can’t figure out how to get it done on a day-to-day basis. When something as practical as financial literacy comes along, you really just get to dig in and have so much fun with it.

Host: Great. That sounds wonderful. Hopefully, that will be valuable to other teachers who might be listening. Again we’ve been speaking with Edward Flannery who teaches economics and financial literacy as a social studies teacher at Vernon Township High School in Vernon Township New Jersey. Ed, thanks for doing this interview.

Ed: Oh thank you so much. A lot of fun.

Welcome to the second episode of The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters. This second episode of the podcast features an interview with Jacqueline Prester, a business and technology teacher Mansfield High School in Mansfield, Massachusetts. See below for a transcript of the interview.

Listen to the podcast now, by clicking below. Or, subscribe to the podcast now via Apple’s iTunes.

The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters is designed to interview teachers about how they got started teaching, tips and tricks for teaching business, marketing, and personal finance to high school students, and how teachers use Virtual Business simulations in their classrooms.

Stay tuned for more episodes of the podcast coming soon! Please help us spread the news about this new podcast. Thank you!

If you’re a high school business, marketing, or personal finance teacher, we’d love to interview you for the podcast. Please send us an email at [email protected]

Transcript of Episode 2 of the High School Business and Personal Finance Teachers Podcast

Host: Welcome to the second episode of the high school business and personal finance teachers podcast. Stay tuned for our interview with Jacqueline Prester. Jacqueline is a business teacher at Mansfield High School in Mansfield,Massachusetts. Stay tuned for the interview.

Virtual Business simulations are the leading cloud based educational simulations for teaching business personal finance and marketing at the high school level.

There are currently eight different virtual business simulations available: retail, hotel, restaurant, management, personal finance, accounting, sports and entertainment marketing, and fashion.

Virtual Business simulations are used in one-third of the high schools in the U.S.. You can learn more about virtual business simulations at w w w knowledge matters dot com.

Host: Welcome back to the Knowledge Matters podcast where we talk to high school teachers about how they got started teaching and tips and tricks they have for teaching business to high school students. I want to welcome our latest guest Jacqueline Prester. Jacqueline teaches business at Mansfield High School in Mansfield Massachusetts. And in 2015 she won the Massachusetts Business Teacher of the Year award. Jacqueline, welcome to the podcast.

Jacqueline: Thanks for having me Jeff. Happy to be here.

Host: Great. Can you tell us what classes you currently teach at Mansfield High School?

Jacqueline: Right now I teach entrepreneurship, personal finance, and a new class this year that goes over Google applications. We just became a Google school and it’s a brand new course for us.

Host: Great. And how did you first get started teaching business.

Jacqueline: I am actually a career changer. Right out of college, I was working in the financial software industry and part of my job that I really liked was training my clients. I used to go around the country and teach training sessions for them and I started liking that part of my job more and more until all I could think about was changing careers and doing that all day long. So I started teaching.

Host: And so how long you have been doing that.

Jacqueline: This is my 11th year at Mansfield High School.

Host: Have you always taught business?

Jacqueline: I actually taught a half year, mid-year placement position, for math before I came to Mansfield. So I did half year as a math teacher and then I really missed business. So I looked for a position that would focus more on that. And I was able to find one,

Host: Can you take us through what a typical day is for you at school?

Jacqueline: Depending on our rotation, some days I don’t see certain classes. In my personal finance class right now,we are winding up the semester so students come in and they check their stocks. We use how the market works dot com to track portfolios and have the students invest and track stocks over the long term. So when they come into class that’s the first thing they do. They sign into their accounts, and then the trash talk starts about where they are ranked against each other. I give them about five-10 minutes to work on their stocks to buy or sell or whatever they need to do. Then we go into whatever the lesson happens to be. Today we were focusing on investment for retirement.

Host:: Given your experience to date with teaching business to high school students, what tips or tricks would you have for other teachers who are listening who are teaching business to high school students - either for veteran teachers or maybe someone who’s just starting out?

Jacqueline: I’ve really evolved since I started teaching business, and I have moved away from teaching out of a textbook. I have tried to make the classes more real and hands on for my students.

I really want it to be personal for them. I’m teaching personal finance and they’re learning how to handle money. And that is going to look very different for students who have a lot of money vs. students who have very little money or anywhere in between. I tried to make it personal for them, and I try to incorporate as many simulations and real world activities for them to make it useful for them. That’s the number one goal. If it’s not useful for them, they won’t take it from class and they won’t use it in their real life.

Host: What’s the planning process like for you in terms of lesson planning? If you’re not teaching out of a textbook, do you plan out a semester in advance or day by day or week by week. What’s your process?

Jacqueline: I do like the simulations that Knowledge Matters provides. I do have those simulations. I use the Virtual Business and Personal Finance and I like the order that those are taught in so I generally go by that. But some classes need a little bit more time on a particular topic and some classes might need less time.

Generally, I know what order I’m going in. Sometimes the length of time I spend on a particular topic will vary. What I usually do is go through the lesson from Knowledge Matters, and then I add some kind of a personalization and some kind of a real world touch to it.For example, when we talked about vehicles we did a lesson afterward where the students could research the prices of real cars and come up with a reasonably priced used car or a reasonably priced new car or something that they know only millionaires could afford. It really puts it in perspective for them to see the differences in prices and the types of loans and the types of insurance that comes with something like that. It really opens their eyes, and it helps them figure out what priorities they’ll have.

Host: Are your business classes considered electives?

Jacqueline: They are electives.

Host: Do you have to entice kids to sign up, and if so what what do you do?

Jacqueline: I really like to joke that I love freshmen. If I can get the freshmen in my classes, they like the style of how I’m teaching and the topics of what I’m teaching. And then they tend to come back. We have lots of repeat customers which is great. All the classes right now are at capacity. They are 100 percent booked.

Host: What years do you teach - freshmen through seniors?

Jacqueline: All of my classes are a mix of all four grade levels. OK. So it is very varied which sometimes can be difficult. You know when we do something in personal finance that relates to paychecks or insurance for cars, the younger students have never had an actual job that has a pay stub that they can relate to, or they’ve never driven before they have no idea how much the cost of gas is or what insurance looks like. Sometimes it’s tough in that regard, but they get very excited because there’s the promise of that happening in the future. So they want to be ready for it.

Host: Do you have a sense when your students come into your classroom, how much knowledge do they already have about personal finance and beyond personal finance just business in general? I would be willing to say that teenagers are aware of brands and businesses whether it’s Apple or Facebook or Snapchat. Is it eye opening for them to discover the business decisions that go into how much something is priced or how car insurance works?

Jacqueline: I do agree. I think when they come into the class there is a varying level of preexisting knowledge because simply I have freshmen versus seniors. What they have experience with will definitely vary. It’s also true for something like finance or talking about money.

It varies in their family too. Some families are very open about that and they have conversations, and they’re willing to talk to their children about budgets and bills and things like that. Whereas some families are not as prone to talk about that that kind of stuff. So I think the students that come in in that situation, they have more to learn and sometimes they’re a little overwhelmed by exactly how much things cost or what goes into making a decision in terms of pricing a product or any kind of a business decision based on money.

Host: You mentioned a little bit earlier but I wondered if you could take us through how you use the Virtual Business simulations with your students.

Jacqueline: I love the simulations. We’ve been using them for quite a while. We were very lucky to get the first one years ago. It was installed on the computers. It wasn’t on the cloud. We received that through a grant, and it was fantastic. We loved it.

Host: Was that Personal Finance or Accounting?

Jacqueline: It was the Personal Finance sim. We used that one and it kind of grew from there, because I loved it and it worked really well. The students loved the idea of being able to get instant grades. They would read something, and then they would take their quiz and they would get feedback right away. With the simulations, they really enjoyed playing the characters that they had and making decisions for them and seeing what kind of results came from those decisions.

We had such a good experience that when the new version came out where it was cloud based. It was very easy to convince the school that this is a jump we should take. We transitioned to the other version, and then we also added some others on as well. I use the restaurant one in my entrepreneurship class. Our marketing teacher the Sports Management sim, and his class has greatly expanded and it’s been great.

Host: Do you find that you typically work through the system through all the lessons?

Jacqueline: I go through them pretty much in the order that they are. There’s a few that I shift around depending on how many days I have to work within a particular week, or you know for vacations coming up and I want to fit something in. But I generally introduce the topic, and let them work through the reading and the math quizzes themselves, and work at their own pace to kind of gauge where the class knowledge is. And then, I do give my students the opportunity to reset any of the grades. It gives them that chance to do better to push themselves and it motivates them to get a higher score. The students work on the simulation and we talk about it, and then I incorporate some kind of real world activity after it. That’s typically the order that I go in for each project for each lesson.

Host: Great. Do your students participate in any of the Virtual Business Challenges that we run every year?

Jacqueline: We have not.

Host: I’m curious about why that is. I’m not trying to put you on the spot. It helps us in terms of our thinking internally.

Jacqueline: For us honestly, it’s a transition year. We have a brand new schedule in our school where the students are taking more classes now and we drop a class every day. So it has been a real transition. As a teacher as well because our class periods are a different length and we went from trimesters to two semesters so there’s so much influx that it was hard to take on anything new this year. We’re figuring out how everything that we did fits into our new current timeline, and then we’ll go from there.

Host: I’m wondering what keeps you motivated as a teacher.

Jacqueline: I love learning. I love school. I am a great teacher in that regard, because I never stop learning. If there is something new and exciting or if there’s a new theory or a new project or something new that’s happening in classrooms, I want to do it too. I’m always pushing myself to try to incorporate the new stuff in my classroom, because my students deserve it. My students deserve to be able to use the latest and greatest technology or participate in activities that are going to be fun and push the limits on their creative thinking and problem solving skills. I try to incorporate a lot of that into what I do.

Host: That’s all the questions that I had. Is there anything we didn’t discuss or any final words of wisdom that you would have for other high school business teachers who might be listening?

Jacqueline: I just think - give the students the opportunity to be creative. They really run with it when they have that chance. Sometimes people tend to regard business as a closed area of study. I find that that’s really far from the truth.

There are so many different directions you could jump into, and if you give the students a little bit of leeway in picking that I think it really helps and it gets them more engaged.

Host: Well again we’ve been speaking with Jacqueline Prester who teaches high school business in Mansfield Massachusetts. Thanks for doing this interview.

Jacqueline: Thanks Jeff.

Welcome to the first episode of The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters. This first episode of the podcast features an interview with Marci Hargrove, a business teacher at Central High School-Keller ISD in Keller, Texas. See below for a transcript of the interview.

Listen to the podcast now, by clicking below. Or, subscribe to the podcast now via Apple’s iTunes.

The High School Business & Personal Finance Teachers Podcast hosted by Knowledge Matters is designed to interview teachers about how they got started teaching, tips and tricks for teaching business, marketing, and personal finance to high school students, and how teachers use Virtual Business simulations in their classrooms.

Stay tuned for more episodes of the podcast coming soon! Please help us spread the news about this new podcast. Thank you!

If you’re a high school business, marketing, or personal finance teacher, we’d love to interview you for the podcast. Please send us an email at [email protected]

Transcript of Episode 1 of the High School Business and Personal Finance Teachers Podcast

Host: Welcome to the very first episode of the high school business and personal finance teachers podcast hosted by knowledge matters. I’m your host Jeff Rutherford. Stay tuned for our interview with Marci Hargrove, a business teacher at Central High School-Keller ISD in Keller, Texas. Stay tuned for the interview.

Knowledge Matters is the leading provider of cloud based educational simulations for teaching business, personal finance, and marketing at the high school level. www.knowledgematters.com

Welcome to the inaugural episode of the High School Business and Personal Finance Teachers Podcast produced by Knowledge Matters.

We’re hoping to talk to teachers about how they got started teaching and tips and tricks for teaching business to high school students. We’ll also talk to them a little bit about how they use Knowledge Matters’ Virtual Business simulations in their classrooms. I want to welcome our first guest to the podcast. Marci Hargrove is a business teacher at Central High School-Keller ISD in Keller, Texas. Marci welcome to the podcast.

Marci: Thank you so much Jeff. I appreciate you inviting me to do this.

Host: Sure. What grades and classes do you currently teach.

Marci: I currently teach grades 10 or 12 and I teach business information management 1, Business Information Management 2, accounting 1, accounting for business management and supervise the school store.

Host: Great. And how did you first get started teaching? How did you start your teaching career?

Marci: Well that’s a really good question. I started straight out of college. Both my parents were educators for all my life. My father was a head football coach and athletic director in towns across Texas. My mother had been in retail. She had worked retail up until she became certified, married my dad, became certified and then she finished her career as a teacher. So it just seemed like a natural thing for me to do.

I was familiar with it. I wish I could say that it was something that I was born to do. And I do feel as if part of me was born to do it. But I don’t know if it’s if it’s the kind of calling that , there are so many wonderful teachers who feel like just a deep passion and desire to teach, and I love what I do. But it never was something like that for me. That just wasn’t my experience.

Host: Have you always taught business?

Marci: Yes sir. My very first year I took a job just to have a job. I had graduated with a degree in which I could teach business classes. But at the time, business teachers, at least in Texas, when you got someplace then you stayed.

There were a lot of teachers in that field that weren’t leaving which made it difficult to find a position in a school district. And so my very first year, I took a position in a district where I taught special education to both junior high and high school students. It was a true challenge and learning experience, because I only had about six weeks of training in college for special education students. But I got there and within the second year of me being there, the business teacher left.

I took a different position in a different district and I was able to move into where I was teaching business classes, and also I taught reading to seventh graders. And then I also taught English to sophomores, because I have a double major with business and English.

Host: Great. So what’s a typical school day like for you?

Marci: Oh yes sir. Great question. My days this year are probably the most relaxed, I guess I could say, than I’ve ever had in my teaching career. They do differ this year than they have before. Used to, for 27 of my 28 years, it was a pretty filled and hectic day - extremely filled and hectic with a variety of classes.

Of course, you’ve got the differences in students. Just the challenge of teaching multiple levels all at the same time, with both male and female, all kinds of learning abilities and things like that. So differentiation is a must. Always has been and always will be.

So this year I’ve just been very fortunate that my administration was able to build a schedule that that allows me some time to just take a breath and and actually do some things, and I’ve changed my mindset the last couple of years.

I used to do a lot of things. I guess you call it front loading, or I did a lot of preparation work. And then the students would do things. But then I would also have a lot of follow-up work because of what they did.

And I’ve changed it to where now I do probably twice the amount of front-end work or front-load work. But then my back-end work on it is substantially less than it used to be. So the kids are involved. They do everything. I just monitor.

I instruct a tiny bit. In certain classes, I have to instruct more than others. And then they’re the ones who do all the work thankfully.

Host: So tell me a little bit more about the front loading work that you do. Can you go into a little bit more detail about that.

Marci: Yes sir. I’ve never been one who likes to necessarily use a textbook as the “be all and end all.” It’s always been a resource, but I’ve just never felt comfortable doing everything just like, “OK go to this page and do this and do that.”

I have created, I don’t even know how many, different projects. I’m using all of the various tools from year to year that our district has asked us to use and utilize.

We are now currently use a program called Canvas which I believe is probably what a lot of people across the United States use. It is the same type of program that they use in many colleges. It takes organization. I utilize the calendar feature. There’s all kinds of advanced features on it, but mostly I use it to post projects.

And I come up with all the projects. Like in my Business Information Management 2 class, those kids have been taught how to use the Microsoft Office package in Business Information Management 1. They have a working knowledge of those programs.

In Business Information Management 2, I take a survey of the class at the beginning of the year and they give me subject matters that they’re interested in doing. And then we take a tally of those, and we group them into broad subject matters per six weeks.

Every six weeks, I create two projects: one in a program that they know about such as Word and then the other will be in a new program that I want to show. Something brand new. Every year, I do customized projects for each of those classes and each of those different six weeks.

Host: All this customisation work that you’re talking about - are these things you’re coming up with on your own and using year to year, or are there resources out there that you like to go to to get ideas from?

Marci: Typically, it’s just me coming up with them from year to year. If I were better at being able to save things that I have created over the years, then I think that it probably would not take me as much time to do that. I often progress and change just because I don’t particularly care about using the same thing from year to year. That’s just never been something that I think is good for me. I could if I wanted to. I just choose not to.

Host: Given your experience at teaching business and business concepts to high school students. do you have any particular tips or tricks or or ideas about curriculum that you would care to share with other teachers who might be listening?

Marci: I’m kind of unique in the fact that this is all I’ve ever done and many many teachers that work in this field have a lot of outside of the classroom experience. I often want to listen to them and kind of what they have to do. I think that what I’m good at is the education part.

As far as the content and the knowledge part, I would suggest if someone is in the same position as I that they that they just do the research and keep things as current as possible with technology changing all the time.

For lack of a better way explain it, you have to goldmine thing. Where you put your pan down and hopefully you pick up a few nuggets, and you try and use those nuggets. Take those things, and use those, and try to sift away all the extra stuff. I would just encourage people to be open, and try not to get into a rut. Utilize the Internet. In our district, we had the Internet for the first time 15 or 16 years ago, maybe more like 20.

I was teaching these classes before the internet was available.

Use the Internet and what it has to offer - apps and things like that. Just be open to those things and use them in ways that are engaging to students. My students enjoy the learning process much, much more when there are projects vs. the day-in and day-out stuff. They like the project-based things.

Host: Versus you standing in front of the class talking or lecturing.

Marci: Oh yes. Exactly.

We just finished an assembly-line project. I made them make a prototype of clipboards with the school store. We’re trying to make products that we can sell in the school store that are made by students.

I had them make the prototype. I have managers. We have four teams. Let me back up. I have two classes. We’re on an A-B schedule. I have an A day class, and B day class, and I have four teams in each class.

I made the managers for each team create a prototype. Then today’s assignment was that those team members today had to replicate those prototypes three more times. We were going to donate one to an auction that our district director told us about. The money raised for it goes to scholarships for CTE students. We donated one per team for that. The other three that each team made are being sold in the school store.

Host: I’m curious about the classes that you teach. Are they classified as electives at your school? What do you do to interest students in signing up for next year? Do you have anything organized that you do to get students interested?

Marci: Well yes. I try to. I know this isn’t about your sims, but I do think your sims have helped in that effort for me especially the personal finance one. The parents are more interested in making sure that we cover those things.

Often they maybe don’t have the time or the patience to cover personal finance with their kids. By getting the parents involved and feeling that there is value in what we teach, that’s often enough to get the kids interested.

But it is it is in large part our district. I have students who choose their classes. And so just building a rapport with kids. Word of mouth is the best way. If I have a good relationship with a certain group of students, then I’m hoping that they will tell their younger siblings or they will tell their friends and say, “Hey, why don’t you take this class?”

That’s my preferred method. I have done other things, but I don’t go out and talk to kids individually or anything like that. I’m not into recruiting. I never have been. I don’t do well with it.

We do announcements. I’ve had kids create commercials that we run on the announcements. We’ve had kids tweet or post things to social media if we’re on a field trip.

On some field trips over the years, I asked them take a picture and then immediately send it out and say, “Hey this is what we get to do.”

Host: Can we talk about how you use the Knowledge Matters Virtual Business simulations in your classes.

Marci: Sure. The very first one I ever used was the personal finance one. I’ll back up even further than that. I’m not the first one on this campus who knew about Knowledge Matters. One of the teachers that was in my department at the time, I was the acting department head for the department at the time, and he came to me. He had been to, I believe, a conference. I can’t remember what conference but he taught sports and entertainment marketing. Was that one of the first ones y’all had?

He brought it to me and asked, “Hey can we get this for my class and I said well sure.” I said, “Let me look at it.” I looked at it and I was like wow this is really interesting. This is awesome. And I said man I really wish that they had something that I could use. And he was like, “I think there’s some other ones. This is just the one of course that applies to my class” I said OK I will then I’ll look into it. We were a new school at the time. We had just opened up. We were inundated with all kinds of resources and stuff, but I took a moment and looked. I have a very, very, very strong belief in how important personal finance matters are. If we can get people who understand how to handle their money on a personal level, then maybe it will translate into a broader level.

I thought that was something that I could use in some way. I decided that I would see if I could have access to it, and then use it as an extra credit for all of my business classes.

They gave me permission to do that. I think they gave me one classroom license or something. I can’t remember. And, as it grew, I had kids - it’s funny. They were like, “I just died. Why did I die?”

Well you got to have a balance. You can’t just work all work and no play. They were like, “I just got robbed!” And I’m like, yep, did you have insurance? It just grew as far as interest. The kids were like, oh my gosh, this is really cool.

That’s how I used it at first. I still use that one. I still use that one as an extra credit option for my business classes where there isn’t a sim available for the course itself. It’s something they can do above and beyond what we do.

A couple of years ago, I did the “Winner winner chicken dinner” thing. That was with the accounting simulation.

With the personal finance one, I use it as an extra credit option. I get them started, and I tell them that they have to work in it a certain amount of time. At the end of the year, we had a competition. I got lifesavers and whoever had the highest score. I got dum dums and said, “You’re not a dummy when it comes to your credit score.”

They were like, “Oh my gosh, did I win?” That one I use as more of an extra credit.

For the accounting one, I used for the first time last year, I was excited because you cover it in the textbook. I try to save my district money by utilizing Microsoft Excel instead of having to order those working papers every year. I teach the kids how to do accounting, how to record transactions and all that stuff in Excel. But,until you put it into practice, they’re just like, “Ok great.” I mean I know how to do it but I don’t understand how I would do it or when I would do it or anything like that. After we got through with the very first part - teaching the kids how to keep books for a service business as a sole proprietorship - that gave them a basis because I believe the accounting sim is actually running a computer repair shop.

It really goes along with the next level which is teaching kids how to run or how to do books for a merchandising business run as a partnership. That’s how our textbooks are. It doesn’t perfectly match up with how we do it, but they still get the same skills and they still can see if they truly understand how to keep books. The worksheet part is amazing! They really do have to figure out, “Ok how do I do adjustments? How do I do this?” It’s really good! I use it as initial instruction, but also they just have to work in it and learn how to do it. It’s curriculum, and I usually use it in the last six weeks. And that’s where we do the “winner winner chicken dinner” competition.

Host: Can you talk about that a little bit about “winner, winner chicken dinner?”

Marci: Yes. It’s just a silly play on words. I heard somebody say it, and I thought that’s kind of catchy. Down here in the south, of course, that’s the type of stuff that’s said all the time.

I thought I could figure out a prize structure. I’m sorry to kind of divert this. I’ve been a cheerleader sponsor, a senior class sponsor, a student council sponsor, a drill team sponsor, and the department head. I’ve had to come up with all kinds of prize structures over my lifetime which is what a lot of teachers have to do.

And I was like ok. I I figured out you had to have a team competition. If your team got third place, then I essentially gave them a rubber chicken. For second place teams, I bought a bunch of nuts and raisins and things like that. And I bought little boxes at Party City, and I made “chicken feed” and gave them that. That was the second prize.

Then the first prize was I gave all the members a $10 gift card. I let them choose Chicken Express or Chick-Fil-A. I went ahead and got each team member that. They use the multiplayer option in the sim, and at the end of the competition, the business that had earned the most was the winner.

Host: That’s great. Do you have your students participate in the Virtual Business Challenges that we run each year?

Marci: Yes sir. Here’s the funny thing about that.

Probably four or five years ago, two young men who were in FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) were in my class. I’m not the sponsor of that particular organization. The sponsor came to me and said, “Hey did you know that they have a competition for this.” I said, “No and that’s wonderful.”

She said, “Do you have anybody who would want to do it?” I asked some students and for our campus you have to be a member of FBLA to compete. That year we didn’t. We learned about it too late in the year.

The next year though there were two young men. That’s what they signed up to do. Because FBLA, the sponsor at the time, allowed the kids to pick which competition they wanted to do and they chose to do that. They were able to do the competition while in my classroom during down time - as well as do it at home.

That was the first time I knew about the online sims. The very first time we got the sims they were all standalone. You had to install them on your computer and all that.

The online thing is just amazing really. It just really is. I was impressed with them when it was a standalone version. Now with it being online, it’s just awesome. They did compete. That’s the only year that I’ve ever had anybody do that because I don’t have any more FBLA members in my class for some reason. I’m not sure how that worked out.

The two of them they ended up being the number one numbers one and two position. I remember that they competed both in the fall challenge and in the spring maybe there were two rounds or something. And they finished in positions one and two both times.

Host: I’m curious given your use of the Virtual Business sims if you have any ideas or suggestions in terms of future simulations or topics.

Marci: Oh wow. My goodness. That’s quite a question. I don’t even know how to start with that because y’all have thought of everything. Y’alls brains are so much better than mine. I am so impressed with the detail that you have.

The one thing that they have said over the years is they are like, “Why can’t I get married?” And I’m like well I don’t know. I was like well I don’t know. Every single year somebody says “Why can I get married?”

I don’t know why but they’re just trying to teach you individual personal financial responsibilities. Just go with it .

Host: We’ll take that into consideration. I was going to mention, we have a new sim that came out a few weeks ago - Virtual Business Fashion. We’re very excited about Virtual Business Fashion.

Marci: Yes I think our fashion teacher is using it now. I don’t know for sure but I think she is.

Y’all did a fantastic job about mimicking different situations that can occur unexpectedly. On the online version, you can have all of a sudden get a torn ACL. Well I think that’s amazing because the kids don’t understand that unexpected and unplanned medical emergencies happen in real life all the time. If you aren’t’ prepared for those, if you haven’t used savings or anything like that then . . .

Oh goodness this is probably going to alienate many people. But I can say. That’s your fault. You shouldn’t spend all your money. You should have put some back. But I do appreciate that you do mimic those unexpected expenses.

The only other thing that I might say - and maybe it’s there and I just didn’t know it. We just had this conversation today and the student said. “How much should I put back out of every paycheck?” And I said well I think the standard rule is that you should put at least 10 percent of your paycheck into your savings. Is that an option when you do direct deposit? Can you automatically take 10 percent of your paycheck and put it into your savings like you can in real life?

Host: I’ll have to check into that. I don’t have the answer off the top of my head.

Marci: Yeah that would be something just because direct deposit is the way people do it now. I know that the way I put it into savings is that I never even see the money. It just comes out of my paycheck and goes directly into my savings. And the other portion goes directly into my bank account. Something like that would be realistic and beneficial.

Host: That’s all the questions I have. Is there anything we discussed or any final words of wisdom that you would have for other high school business teachers?

Marci: I am I really I just I’m the only thing I can say is just constantly be OK with change because it’s the only thing that we’re sure of. It’s it’s always going to change and be adaptable and stay positive. OK. As best you can. I know that there are many challenges out there that keep you from sometimes being positive. day in and day out and in many them are beyond your control. My control. And I think that as being a teacher for this song I’ve learned to let go of the things I can’t control. That is something our administrators here have just beat into our brains. And I know that as a teacher you get desperately to make a positive impact for your students on your students for the future for the future. But just accept the things that are out of your control stay positive and have fun with it.

Host: Just have fun with them. Great. Well we’ve been speaking with Marci Hargrove. Marci thank you so much.