Mandatory Financial Literacy?? Texas is Leading the Way

How I wish more states would mandate the teaching of financial literacy!  We are supposed to teach relevant content and life lessons.  Understanding how money works is an extremely important life lesson.  Better to start young to make good choices and take care of money.  Interestingly, the first financial lesson is in Kindergarten with lessons on getting money as a gift versus borrowing from someone.  Along through the years, students will learn supply and demand, calculating income tax, interest rates, and loan lengths.  WOW!  Now this is certainly relevant to today's world.

Area educators equipping themselves for financial education - Financial literacy now mandatory.  Andrew Atterbury.  8.7.13,  Standard-Times gosanangelo.com
http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/education/area-educators-equipping-themselves-for-financial-education_13477466

Financial Literacy for Time-Squeezed Math Teachers

Math teachers have a heavy curriculum, as you know.  It's hard to squeeze in other important subjects but financial literacy is important to students even to middle schoolers as they ponder how much to manage the money they do have, which is probably not much.  This article  presents some lesson ideas and resources you can use.  Please follow the embedded links for ideas for middle and also for high schoolers.  There are even 30 financial education games students can play on their own time.  What resources do you use as a busy math teacher to address financial literacy concerns? Enter your ideas in Comments below.

Revolution, Responsibiity and Football:  Teaching Financial Literacy to Middle Schoolers.  Brian Page. 3.28.14.  edutopia
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/middle-school-financial-literacy-resources-brian-page

New Standards for Financial Lteracy Coming Soon

Neglected for so long in our math curriculums is financial literacy. The Council for Economic Education has developed a set of new standards at the request of educators at all levels.  There will be clear benchmarks of what students should know by the end of grades 4, 8, and 12.  There are 8 topics....

1. Earning income
2. Buying goods and services
3. Saving
4. Using Credit
5. Investing
6. Protecting andf insuring

To me, all are wonderful and important.  We can easily weave these topics into our standard math program with relevant everyday examples all of us face.  We can also weave the concepts into our reading program with targeted selections and close reading.  Please check out the many embedded links. 

Coming Soon:  New Standards for Teaching Kids about Money.  Dan Kadlec. 3.12.13.  Time - Business & Money.
http://business.time.com/2013/03/12/coming-soon-new-standards-for-teaching-kids-about-money/

Financial Knowledge - An Issue for Teachers & Students

Here is a fantastic article about basic understanding of financial management.  Most all of us believe that a basic course in financial literacy would be great at the high school level.  But problems abound.  Not only is curriculum an issue, but teachers are an issue, because adults as a whole have little understanding themselves. Who qualifies as a teacher?  Good question.   A great read!  An important read!  Be sure to read the many comments after the article.....quite enlightening to be sure.
What is your take as a math teacher?

True or False: Many Americans Don't Understand the Basics of Investing. Andrea Coombes. 9.4.12.The Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444812704577605232303164416.html?mod=dist_smartbrief