Students, Money and Responsibility

What do these 3 things have in common?

Lets take a moment to think about these three topics: 

• Students, we know what those are...the tiny (most of the time) people looking up at us with bright eyes (sometimes hidden by eye lids) eager to learn (for the most part) about what ever the state deems fit (not always the most valuable lessons) you teach.
• Money, the green stuff that makes the world go round and pays us to teach said students.
• Responsibility, something we believe we all have including said students (well we sure hope so) to get up and go to work every day.

Now the connection between these 3 things may becoming more clear now but if not let me fill you in on what this blog is really about.

FINANCIAL LITERACY

Yep I said it we need to learn how to become financially responsible and we need to be teaching these skills to students. How else do we expect them to get through college? I mean we surely shouldn't leave all this on the parents to teach their kids, or on the student to figure out on their own through failures. Because that is what we are setting students up for; failure, failure to understand what a loan is, what a grant is, how to budget money, how to write a check, and how credit cards work. 
Now this is a lot to take in and you would think schools would be teaching this, but they aren't. Here is a chance for agricultural education to step in and help out those students who we care oh so much about! 

Most of us may think that oh we do SAEs students know how to budget, but do they really? It's quite different budgeting money that isn't really yours. Sure you sold your cow and used that money to buy a few more cows, but what about the feed for those new cows? You live on a farm so you put down how much it costs but you really don't need to budget for that cost. See where I am getting at? We may think we got the skills down on how to make a budget but we really don't fully understand. 

How can we fix this problem? Well there are many ways to address the issue and HELP our students, our future workers, the next generation. 

There are so many resources out there on how to teach these different topics, there are lessons already written, and we have the chance to make this happen. SO what do we focus on? Coming from the stand point of I didn't know how to write a check (yeah I know I should have learned when I got my first check book). I learned the hard way, I sent in a check and guess what it came back because I didn't do it right...I learned but it would have been so much better for me if I learned in High School so I didn't enter college a complete fool.

Another skill we need to focus on is the difference between loans, grants, and scholarships. Because I still don't know all the definitions and I'm about ready to graduate. Now it would have been awesome if I could have had the chance to learn in high school so I was better prepared to pay for college. Next we need to talk about credit and how it works. We need to understand that credit can make or break you. I still don't have a credit card because I don't feel comfortable having one. I know I need one to buy a car or buy a house but how do I start credit? Now I think if I had training in high school I would be a confident young adult.

I think I understand being financially responsible but based on what I know about everything else with financial literacy I'm probably not...sadly. So how can students work on budget? Well we can have them do their SAE, true, but that's not "real" money all the time. Sadly I don't know of a great way to do this? Maybe use class "money" which isn't "real" but use this money to buy homework passes, get points, earn money by doing extra work, invest in credit, invest in projects. Wow this might be something? Is going to FFA events work?  Can I get paid to have fun? YES! (teach ag) 


From what I have gathered there are a lot of resources out there... Here are just a few I found helpful and want to save for when I get into my own classroom. 
There are also a great amount of videos out there 
Like this one!  an online game? Now I think students would like this! It brings up a lot of good talking points and shows the value of money.

http://www.financialeducatorscouncil.org/financial-literacy-students/

http://www.cfs.wisc.edu/briefs/cfs_research_brief_2012-5.2.pdf

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/high-school-financial-literacy-resources-brian-page

http://www.bbt.com/bbtdotcom/financial-education/planning/financial-literacy.page

Now I'm asking you for help! Please help me teach my students how to be financially confident and literate. Help me help our future generations!