Teaching Financial Literacy… for Fun!

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a special episode of the Teacher’s Off Duty Podcast with Daymond John and they were talking about teaching kids financial literacy. One idea they mentioned was having an in-class economy, where students earn classroom currency and then have to budget their money accordingly.

Since I was listening to this while I was running, and desperately trying to stay distracted, I ended up thinking through a plan on how I would do it if I ran a classroom – so I thought I would share this in case any teachers wanted to riff on the idea.

The General Idea

Run the classroom on a currency, where students can earn and spend the currency throughout the school year. Use this to incentivize certain behaviors and actions and disincentivize class disruptions.

What students must pay for:

·        Rent for their desk.

·        Penalties/fines (anything that requires disciplinary action).

·        Any additional taxes the teacher decides to set up.

What students can choose to pay for:

·        Extra time on certain assignments or tests.

·        Treats/toys from a selection available in the class.

·        Special privileges (e.g. recess 5 minutes early, etc.)

How students can earn currency:

·        Achieving certain thresholds on specific assignments and tests.

·        Notably good behavior.

·        Extra credit assignments.

·        Bartering with their peers.  

Note: I think it would make sense for all students to get a basic income for every day they attend class. This would prevent students from completely running out of currency.

How to Set Up the Economy

·        Choose a currency – think of a fun name and consider the value of the currency. Depending on how advanced your students are, you may even want to introduce the idea of inflation.  

·        Pick the starting point – based on your currency and value, consider what kind of spending power your students should have from the start.

·        Develop a real estate market - since you have an economy, now you can create economic incentives! Here’s how:

• Set up different prices of rent for each desk in the classroom to incentivize sitting closer to the front of the class. If you really want to have some fun, set up a ‘rent’ price and a ‘buy outright’ price so that students can own their desk (and particularly enterprising ones can buy up a few desks and rent them out).

• Randomly assign seating at the beginning of the year.

• Allow students to periodically put their desks “on the market” before rent is due (or try to buy their desk if they have enough currency).

·        Create savings or investment options -  by offering a certain amount of interest if they save their currency in a certain place, so they get into the practice of saving portions of their income. You could ‘hire’ a couple of students to be the Bankers that keep track of this.

·        Set up learning goals about financial inequity – identify things that are considered ‘crimes’ for low-income individuals that are just ‘fines’ for the rich. Late to class? Detention unless you pay the fine.

·        Track your students’ attitudes towards finances – by taking pulse surveys on how they feel about money and what they consider sound financial decision making. I would be so interested in seeing how that evolves through the year.

School is meant to prepare us for the real world, and the real world is capitalism…for now. I feel like if this was how middle school was structured, I would feel so much more engaged with this kind of reward system and because I would be able to see the real-world applications.

What do you think? Would this type of lesson planning work for you?  Let me know.

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