On October 9, 2023, EVERFI hosted their annual LearnOn Conference. One of the sessions of this conference focused on uncovering the power of integrating financial literacy across subjects, and how to equip students with real-world skills for a lifetime of success. As we approach April, Financial Literacy Month, there’s no better time to implement some of the ideas from this session in your classroom!
Register Here: LearnOn Session: Money Matters- Cross-Curricular Financial Literacy to watch the webinar on-demand in its entirety or follow along with the transcript below. Viewing the session on-demand also qualifies teachers for a PD certificate.
Full Webinar Transcript
Jesse Poquette (00:05):
It looks like we have a few more people trickling in, but we will get started because we have so much to get to. So hello everyone, and Paris D – is my audio coming through ok? Good visual. Thumbs up. All right, awesome. Thank you so much. Hello everyone. Welcome to Money Matters Cross Curricular Financial Education. I am really excited to get to the session. Before we go into all the specifics, [00:00:30] just want to do another hashtag, turn on our theme, share the magic, follow us on all of the socials (#everfik12), all the places that you know and love so much. Our handle is there. We’ll have more handles coming up in a second here, with my awesome cohost. And then any audio, any questions, anything else happening, you can pop those in on the chat. I’ll be monitoring the chat. We also have a lot of other people monitoring the chat throughout the day, so any tech questions, please feel free to put them in the chat. We’ll help you through.
(01:00):
So awesome. Money Matters: Cross-Curricular Financial Education. Hello everyone. My name is Jesse Poquette. I’m a District Lead here at EVERFI. My two awesome hosts are here with us as well, Dee Forbes and Paris Woods. We will introduce both of ’em in a second. We have a lot of fun stuff to get to today, and hopefully you’ll not be hearing much of my voice at all. So agenda, we are in introductions right now. Then Dr. Paris Woods is going to talk a little bit more [00:01:30] about her amazing book, The Black Girls Guide to Financial Freedom. And then Dee is going to talk more about incorporating financial education into your classroom. We’ll have some time for questions and then some next steps as well. So you should be leaving this session with a bunch of awesome ideas to put into practice like tomorrow if you want to.
(01:50):
So my first guest here, or co-host rather, Dr. Paris Woods. She studied educational inequity at Harvard University. [00:02:00] She’s worked for 20 years in a career in education, really committed to poverty alleviation, and she beat the odds herself by escaping poverty, eliminating debt. She maximized her income and learning to build wealth and create financial freedom. And she published a best-selling book, The Black Girls Guide to Financial Freedom that has reached over 30,000 worldwide. So Dr. Paris Woods, thank you so much for joining us today. I will [00:02:30] go on mute and go to the background and please welcome.
Dr. Paris Woods (02:34):
Awesome. Thanks so much Jesse and so great to be here with you all this morning on Indigenous People’s Day. So I wanted to get us started with a story of two girls. And Jesse, if you want to move us to the next slide, this will kick us off with and what I’m hoping to pull out is, how important financial literacy is at this age, [00:03:00] the age of the students that we are serving. So a tale of two girls, Bright Bella and savvy Selena. So Bright, Bella grew up in a Midwestern town and was the first in her family to go to college. Not only that, but she got into one of the top colleges in the country on a full scholarship. She and her family were so excited to help Bella get everything she needed for school. So they went to stores all over town [00:03:30] and bought everything on the stores, recommended college lists.
The Danger of Taking On Debt As a Young Person
(03:34):
Now Bella came from a low-income family, so they didn’t have a lot of money to buy supplies, so they took advantage of credit card signups at each store. At 18 years old, Bella signed up for multiple credit cards and over a thousand dollars in debt. Bella succeeded in college and found a dream job in a rural town an hour away from her college. [00:04:00] It became clear to her that she needed a car to get around. So she and her mom went to the dealership and she bought a brand new $15,000 car with a monthly payment of around $400 plus insurance. As Bella continued on throughout her career, she continued to use credit cards for expenses, assuming that as her salary increased, she’d eventually be able to pay it all off. Eventually she decided to [00:04:30] return to school for a master’s degree and took out the full amount of tuition in loans.
(04:36):
By age 30, Bella was deep in debt. She had racked up $20,000 in credit card debt, $20,000 in car loan debt, including the interest on her loan, and another $60,000 in student loans with over $100,000 in debt and wit over a hundred thousand dollars in debt, a lot of her monthly budget [00:05:00] was eaten up with debt payments. By age 30, she realizes she is way behind on the recommended savings and investment goals for her age. She regrets racking up debt because she would much rather be spending her income on building up her investment accounts and creating financial freedom for her future. Plus, she’s feeling exhausted from work and could really use a break. She realizes she has a hard road ahead and will [00:05:30] need to work hard for several years to get out of her debt, get it paid off, and to get her savings and investments to a healthy level so she has more freedom in her work choices and her life in the future.
The Benefits of Saving and Investing Early
(05:43):
If anyone can relate to Bright Bella, definitely let us know in the chat. And let’s hear a little bit about Savvy Selena. So Savvy Selena never thought much about saving and investing, but she grew up in a pretty frugal household [00:06:00] and was advised to always spend within her means. She avoided debt after high school, attending college on scholarships and then finding a lucrative marketing job in New York City after graduation. However, despite achieving her career and lifestyle dreams, after just a couple of years working in corporate America, she realizes that she finds the work extremely exhausting As an introvert, interacting with people all day drains her energy. [00:06:30] So after work, she veggies out in front of the TV to recover. She starts to realize that working for other people, commuting to an office every day, and working toward goals that are not aligned with her own is not something she wants to do for the next 40 years.
(06:47):
Her boyfriend mentions the idea of early retirement to her, something she had read about in online Reddit forums. Intrigued, she starts to do research on the concept reading blogs like [00:07:00] “Mr. Money Mustache” and books like “The Simple Path to Wealth” by JL Collins. She admits to herself that life is too short and she wants to spend it on her own terms. At age 25, she makes up her mind – she’ll retire in 10 years. So she devises a plan. According to her research, if she can save up 25 times her annual expenses and investments, she’ll have enough to retire. [00:07:30] She realizes that the biggest part of her budget is rent living in New York City. So she decides to move to a cheaper city. With that adjustment and general frugal living, she calculates that she can live happily on a budget of $20,000 per year. 20,000 times 25 is $500,000 and her goal is set. Over the next 10 years.
(07:54):
She will focus on earning as much as she can and saving as much as she can to reach [00:08:00] her goal of building up $500,000 in investments. As the years go, by an interesting thing happens. She finds herself saving even more than she intended, and the market is doing pretty well. So her index funds are growing in value at a great rate. It turns out she’s able to reach her goal in half the time at age 30, just five and a half years after deciding to retire, her investment portfolio reaches $500,000. [00:08:30] She announces her retirement from the corporate world and prepares to set sail on her next adventure. Okay, so how many folks can relate to Savvy Selena’s story? I’m looking in, Jennifer says she’s been Bella – Financial Peace help me and my family. Yes, we’re almost debt free. I love that. So I love to start with sort of comparing and contrasting [00:09:00] these two stories of Bright Bella and Savvy Selena.
Many Key Financial Decisions Occur By Age 18
(09:04):
And especially for those of us who work with young folks who are still in high school, a lot of the decisions that these young women made began at age 18. And so, the information that we can provide at this stage makes such a huge difference. In terms of my own background, Bright Bella is actually my story. So I’m someone who grew up in a low income family [00:09:30] and usually when I share these stories with young people, I ask them, tell me, let’s compare and contrast. What do you notice about Bright Bella? What do you notice about SavvySelena? And folks say, well, Bright Bella certainly was really smart, but she made some dumb choices with her money and they feel comfortable saying that, not knowing that Bright Bella is me. So, after making all of those poor choices, it took me from 18 to 30 to realize that different was possible with money, [00:10:00] and that’s what actually led me to write “The Black Girl’s Guide to Financial Freedom,” which is my book.
(10:07):
So, if we want to move to the next slide here. And let me check. Okay, folks can see the slides. So I’m curious, you heard some of my biggest financial regrets and they certainly weaved their way throughout the book. What is your number one financial regret? So we are all adults. We’re farther ahead. We’re looking back and wanting to pass [00:10:30] along lessons learned to the young people that we serve. What is your number one financial regret? And go ahead and type that in the chat. And someone said getting married in all caps. So we got student loans for sure, multiple credit cards, not saving in college when you received your check, loaning out money to family. [00:11:00] So just based on what we’re seeing in the chat, and you all can see this as well, debt is certainly playing a huge role here. And as we noticed in my story, and the story of so many of us, a lot of folks start accumulating debt at age 18.
(11:17):
So this is when we can get a credit card. This is when a lot of us are taking on student loans and Jennifer has listed all of the different ways we went into debt. So even after [00:11:30] we finished the degree and we feel successful, we think what’s next? Well, I need a new car. Well, I need all these different ways to spend money. And so debt has certainly become one of the things that drags us down. I’d be curious for folks – how much you learned about debt in high school? And then now as a teacher, how much you feel you’re able to share these sort of lessons early on with your students? And we do have a teacher on [00:12:00] the panel as well. So Deanna will be sharing some tips for how to resolve this. But I think what we’re seeing here and what I can take away from your comments is just how critical this is that we’re actually at an inflection point and if we work with young people, we actually have the power to completely change the future and change their lives financially with the information that we can share with them today.
(12:25):
So let’s move to the next slide. And I want to sort of take a look. [00:12:30] We’re going to spend just a couple of slides talking about some of the key financial knowledge that could make a huge difference for young people if they knew it today. And so, this slide here is a slide I usually use with young people when we’re talking about: how does one become a millionaire? So that’s what we’re going to talk about in the next few slides. I will warn you that as adults we don’t, this isn’t going to feel good to us because we’re already farther ahead [00:13:00] and if we could go back, we’d change these things, but just to encourage us that wow, we could make such a huge difference for young people with this knowledge – just by factors of time. So in this slide called How to Build Wealth, this is a framework that I talk about in The Black Girls Guide to Financial Freedom, and that’s just a helpful one for us to consider the purpose of money and the role that it can play in our lives.
(13:27):
So I’m sort of contrasting [00:13:30] three different types of folks and how their money serves them. So at the top we can see the typical spender, and this sounds like most of us where we earn money from work, we pay off our expenses, and then hopefully we have a little bit leftover for savings and investments. I don’t know how many of us can relate to that, wishing that we had a little bit more leftover, but our bills certainly take up the bulk of the money that we earn. And so what I’d like to [00:14:00] sort of get young folks thinking about is, well, what might be different about how a future millionaire manages their resources? And so if you see the second column here, the second row, this is someone who takes the income from work. So very expensive money. We had to trade our labor for this money.
(14:20):
So it’s really critical the choices we make with it. And I asked folks to consider what might be different if the first thing we did with our money [00:14:30] was pay ourselves first in the form of savings and investments?. And there are certainly folks like Savvy Selena who once this occurred to her, this goal of building wealth, she shifted into putting the majority actually of her income, because she wanted to retire ASAP into savings and investments, and then using what’s left over for her expenses. And the result of that is Savvy Selena’s outcome. And just so you know, Savvy Selena is also a real person [00:15:00] and she runs a blog called the A PurpleLife.com. This is a young woman, a black woman who did retire early at age 30. So now the blog talks about traveling and all the fun things that she’s been doing since she retired.
(15:15):
But you can certainly go back and look at earlier posts to see what it looked like for her to reach this realization that she could use her money to create freedom, and run the numbers and then actually pull the trigger on retiring early. And so this last row here about the [00:15:30] wealthy retiree is actually Savvy Selena’s reality today. So she was able to save up enough in her savings and investments so that she no longer needs to work, and she lives off the interest and dividends from those investments to pay her expenses every day. How many of us would love for that to be true? So that we go to work because we want to and not because we need to. So I’ll share a little bit about how this works the easy way, what we call what is [00:16:00] the simple path to wealth that is so much more accessible to young people than maybe to those of us who are in our forties and beyond like myself?
(16:09):
So it can look a little bit different, but take a look at this next slide here. And this is the concept that all of us are familiar with. And so it’s helpful to have a visual for young people to understand what is compound interest, how does it work, why does it matter to put some money away for [00:16:30] today into an account that generates interest and how that grows exponentially and what the power of that is over time. And the next slide sort of gives an example of an A and a B. This might be something to screenshot or there are plenty of examples of this on the internet comparing Jack and Jill. So someone who starts investing at age 25, just a lump sum of $20,000 for 10 years, just 10 years of investments [00:17:00] can get someone to this 2.25 million versus Jill who starts investing much later, maybe at the age. Many of us are invests significantly more $20,000 a year for 30 years and still winds up in a poorer position than Jack. So I think for all of us adults who can testify to the impact of some of the negative financial choices that we have made, how powerful is it for us to then [00:17:30] say, Hey, you all could be the Jack, I’m the Jill, I’m starting today, but what if you started now?
(17:38):
And then this next slide, if we’re in the conversation about how does one become a millionaire, just thinking about the power of investing over time. So this chart assumes a 10% annual return, how little you would have to invest every single month to reach a million [00:18:00] if you have the power of time on your side. For folks who are looking for resources, I really like to have things that are complicated like investing explained in the voice of young people. So the next slide shows one of my favorite favorite little YouTubers, and this is Sunoa and Melea who run a channel called Our Rich Journey Junior. And they’re actually the children of two of my favorite [00:18:30] bloggers who are early retirees as well. And they retired early with school-aged children, these two. And so the kids have a channel, and in this one they talk about the power of index funds.
(18:42):
So if you were looking at the previous slides, I’m wondering, well, how might I get a 10% return year after year without taking on a bunch of risk? Index funds is the way to do that. And so these girls do a really great job of explaining, well what is an index fund? And they have the little candies to talk about [00:19:00] automatic diversification and lower risk. And the next slide for the adults among us, just a reminder that the power of taking a simple route to wealth is espoused by folks who do this professionally for a living. So those of us who know or have heard of Warren Buffet, who is a billionaire, who certainly has created wealth by choosing individual stocks [00:19:30] or playing the investing game, which is something that so many of us think of when we think of investing. Even someone who’s an expert at that says that if all you did was invest in an index fund, you could actually outperform most professional investors.
(19:49):
So I think in terms of the concept of simple paths to wealth, our examples as the adults who’ve made some of the choices, what [00:20:00] we could go back and do differently, and then the math behind how this actually works, I think is so powerful. So the last slide here, second to last slide, I’m going to move us to an invitation if this is so simple, and this is what the kids ask because I just presented a very simple path to wealth. Take your money, prioritize saving and investments and put it in an index fund and to see what’s possible. Well, why aren’t more adults doing [00:20:30] this? If we have more time, I’d ask you, but I have a feeling it’s that we have already accumulated so much in our budgets. And so for young people, I talk about the impact of debt because for many of us, that is what has been true.
(20:44):
We’ve accumulated debt and now we are servicing those debts instead of being able to prioritize investing. And so the book that I wrote actually talks a lot about debt in the first part. How are the ways that debt is normalized in society [00:21:00] and to juxtapose that with what might be possible on the other side if we made different choices with our money or if we chose to follow this simple investing advice of someone like Warren Buffett. So the next slide just gives an overview of some of the topics that are covered in the book, The Black Girls Guide to Financial Freedom, where we talk about credit cards, education loans, car loans, and then also thinking about what are our personal financial values? How do we think [00:21:30] about career in the context of trading our time, our resources, our labor, our gifts for money, which is a very valuable transfer.
(21:42):
And then what do we do with those resources we get in exchange, particularly when it comes to basic investing and creating the level of freedom that someone like a Savvy Selena might enjoy in her life as a result of her financial choices. So this is the actual [00:22:00] last slide. The next one is an invitation to you. So if this is the type of conversation that you want to be having with students in your classroom, The Black Girl’s Guide to Financial Freedom is a bestselling book. And whenever I’m having a day where I need a pick me up, I go on Amazon and read the reviews. And so one of the things that I noticed was that a lot of women, a lot of folks our age read the book, resonate with the messages, feel [00:22:30] encouraged, and then they think, well actually I wish I had known this much sooner and end up taking the book and handing it as a gift to a young person in their life.
(22:39):
So a lot of the folks who reach out to me on social media with follow-up questions to the book are young people. And so at this stage, I’m interested in seeing what it could look like for young people en mass to have access to this information. And so my invitation to those of you who are with us today [00:23:00] is to participate in piloting this book with your classroom. And so you’re able to receive a special EVERFI discount on bulk orders of the book. And I want to hear your feedback. What does it look like to share this type of information with young people before they make all the mistakes that we made? And I’m happy to support you and your classroom in any way, whether that means inviting me to speak or we can get creative about this. But I’m on a mission to ensure that no young person has [00:23:30] to repeat the exact same mistakes we all did and thinking about how to use this resource and others to pay these lessons forward and ensure that young folks don’t have to repeat our mistakes. So if that’s of interest to you, feel free to email me: [email protected], and let me know you’d like to participate and I’d love to support you in your classroom and in terms of getting this information to young people. So with that, [00:24:00] we’ll pass it back to Jesse.
Jesse Poquette (24:02):
Awesome, thanks Paris. Thank you Dr. Woods. That was so much awesome information there, really wonderful. I think it’s so powerful and this is all stuff that is so important, but also kids really, they are eager to learn about finances and to have all of the resources that are there that can really help them. There was one thing in the chat that I kind of chuckled at. I think it was JK said, [00:24:30] 10 years on my students. None of them remember learning about financial literacy, but they’re not making the mistakes that we previously did. And I think that’s a great educator little anecdote there. But with that, I want to kick it over to Dee Forbes. We’re really talking about incorporating financial education into your classroom. Give some really practical awesome stuff to do with your students.
Deana Forbes (24:58):
Alright, Hey y’all. I am Dee. I [00:25:00] know a lot of you guys are teachers in here, so if you’re a teacher, can you put in the chat what subject you teach? My specialty is social studies and believe it or not, there’s so many ways to incorporate financial literacy in the social studies and I’ve done it many a times. So before we get started, I want to give a little bit of background about myself and I do see your comments. I see family consumer science, business. Okay, awesome. Yes, you can go to the next slide, Jesse. Of course. [00:25:30] I’m a master social studies teacher. I’ve been dealing with social studies for at least over 10 years. I’m more specifically in black history education. Some of my collaborations include Play Black Wall Street. It’s a couple that’s created a board game and financial literacy flashcards to help our communities learn more financial literacy.
(25:50):
And so those are some things that I’ve used in my classroom. And then I’m also a mother of two beautiful boys as you guys can see. And I am transitioning into full-time entrepreneurship. And [00:26:00] I won’t be returning to the classroom this year, but I have my own classroom in my basement. My basement is all set up as a daycare, so I’m really excited about that. But a little bit more background you guys, I have a very similar background to Paris. I grew up in Danville, Virginia. If you know where that’s at, say something in the chat. I don’t know how many people know where Danville Virginia is at, but if you’re a social studies teacher, you might know it as the last capital of the Confederacy. But anyhow, so I grew up there, and I came from a low income [00:26:30] family as well, y’all. When I turned 18, the typical I was offered a credit card from my bank that I had my account with.
The Importance of Understanding How Credit Cards Work In High School
(26:39):
And I knew nothing about credit cards. The only thing that I knew about credit cards was that what my parents told me was that they were bad and don’t get ’em, but I didn’t learn how to go about using them responsibly if you do get ’em. So low and behold, I got one and I did not use it responsibly. Ended up messing my credit up very [00:27:00] early on in college, couldn’t do anything. I learned that the hard way. I couldn’t do anything with a 400 credit score, but I was able to gain more financial literacy in college, get around some really good leaders and business-minded people. And by the time I graduated you guys and started working, I basically had took my credit score from 400 to 750, and I was able to refinance my car and now I’m sitting in a home that I’ve purchased that I did not think that I would be able to get because I [00:27:30] did not learn the correct things to do.
(27:33):
And so that’s important to me, and I don’t want my students to have to go through things like that. So yes, of course, I do incorporate financial literacy, but I also take things a step further. I did see in the comments that some of you may feel like, oh, you teach ’em about this stuff but it doesn’t resonate with them. Well, I have a way that I make it resonate with them, by making it personal. So you can go to the next slide. A lot of our students today, y’all, whether you may know it or not, are super entrepreneurial [00:28:00] and they do have a good understanding that finances are an integral part of our daily lives. If you’re a CTE or business teacher, then you already know this, that 23 U.S. states require students to take a personal finance course to graduate. I know we do here in Virginia where I’m at as well.
(28:18):
And we also know based on some of the things that we’ve experienced, some of the things that Paris has shared, that having a strong knowledge of finances can greatly improve your quality of life. And [00:28:30] quite the contrary of not having a good background on finances can also take the quality of life down for you. It’s just the reality of the world that we do live in. So, I’m going to share with you guys some different things that I’ve done in my classroom to really touch on financial literacy. But first, let’s kind of go over some different topics that if you do teach social studies, you could go to the next slide. If you do teach social studies, here are some topics and units and [00:29:00] different ways that you might think about incorporating financial literacy in some capacity. So if you’re teaching the American Revolution, hey, touch on taxes.
(29:09):
Yes, we’re talking like 1700s, but take a pause and be like, while we at y’all, let’s actually talk about taxes a little bit. You may not be an expert and that’s okay. I tell teachers all the time, I don’t know everything, but I know how to get on YouTube and find a very educational video. I know how to go on here, Power EVERFI and type in financial literacy on EVERFI and pull up a lesson [00:29:30] that my students can interact with. We don’t have to know everything. Reconstruction, you could talk about the Freedmen’s Bureau, Black Wall Street, that’s business ownership, right? Imperialism and World Wars. Talk about foreign banking, talk about how money was being generated on the home front. The Great Depression is a big one, right? The stock market, even elections. If you teach government, you could talk about campaign costs and fundraising. So headed to the next slide, I’ll show you guys two examples of activities that I’ve had students do in my classroom.
Making Financial Literacy Personal For Students
(29:57):
And this for me makes [00:30:00] them learning about the topic personal. So I’m not just going to teach them, oh, okay, this is how banks work and this is how big corporations work. I’m going to teach them how to start their own corporation. I’m going to tell them to tell me what business they already have, because a lot of students have businesses, and we might not ever know if we don’t ask. This past year when we did this project that I created, Build Your Own Business, I turned around, I was so floored at how many students I didn’t even know had a business already or had a business idea because I [00:30:30] believe that business is one of the keys to help us get into a better space and financial literacy. And that’s why I have such a heart and passion for it. Both of my parents are full-time entrepreneurs.
(30:41):
My mom has been a photographer for the last 15 years. She’s only worked for herself. And then before my father passed away, he was also an entrepreneur in music, in the music industry. So, with this activity I was teaching about the Industrial Revolution in the Gilded Age. Now we know it’s a lot of stuff in that unit that [00:31:00] makes us be like ERRR, corporations, big business. But I also try to be responsive in that aspect by having students of course, build their own business. They get the option to work individually or in a group. They have to create a startup budget for their business. They have to explain how they’ll get funding. They’ll have to figure out how they’ll build their emergency fund, how they’re going to establish revenue, their marketing plan, et cetera. They also need to tell me if they’re going to have employees, what’s your plan to ensure a safe work environment [00:31:30] and equitable pay?
(31:32):
You see how I slid that in there? Because we know if you’re teaching me Gilded Age, there’s a lot of things in there where you’re like, this was not equitable and this was not okay. So just trying to be culturally responsive there and social justice oriented and incorporating that as well. And then I’ll allow students to present a slide, show a video, or a method of their choice and bring handouts for their class. So if you guys see this picture on the left, one of my students, she’s actually over to the right, her name is Gabby, and she [00:32:00] actually had this business Goodies by Gabby, y’all. So she brought in a K-pop. It’s so cute. It was so good. And I was pregnant at the time. So she was like, oh, Ms Boy, I think you’re going to like these. And I was tearing ’em things up, okay?
(32:12):
She would bring me all kinds of sweets from her bakery. I asked her, I said, do you want to have a shop one day? And she was like, yes, ma’am, I do. For me, knowing that my students were very business minded, that’s the approach that I took in the social studies classroom when talking about certain [00:32:30] topics because I wanted to be culturally responsive and I wanted the students to know, we care about your business. I care about your business. I’m going to support your business, because I know that that is of the pathways for you to beat all of this stuff. That’s why I’ve taken that path myself. I love being in the classroom, but hey, we in the house now because business is business. And so some of the other students here in the middle, AB – he created Jackpot Fitness, he had his own fitness brand, and then the students at the top made an essential [00:33:00] oil that helps teenagers specifically focus more on reducing stress.
(33:05):
So they came up with some amazing ideas. And another idea that you might consider incorporating, especially if you teach history, you can go to the next slide, Jesse. It’s called Build Your Own Classroom Wall Street. If you’re teaching about The Great Depression, if you’re teaching about the stock market and Wall Street, you can also teach about Tulsa’s Black Wall Street. Have students actually take this approach of studying the individual businesses, [00:33:30] put some, how can I say it, humanity on these people’s name because these were actual human beings. A black man named O.W. Gurley was actually the founder of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street. And so, we study those individual businesses and then I’ll say, okay, let’s have the class create their own classroom Wall Street so they can break into different groups. They can create businesses that are going to serve the community. So we add that touch of humanity and social justice in there.
(33:59):
They’re going to develop business [00:34:00] plans, they’re going to incorporate certain financial literacy terms such as investment interest, et cetera. And then let the groups present their business plans to the classroom via slideshow or video. And then once each student is presenting, what I like to do is I take a picture of them with their slides, show up the cover of it, and then print those pictures out, put ’em outside the classroom and say, here’s our Wall Street and the names of their businesses. If their business partners put their business partners there and et cetera. [00:34:30] So that students can have a sense of like, wow, I can really create something. I can really come up with something that I can use in my future. I can pay respect to Tulsa’s Black Wall Street as well. So just mixing up a lot of different good elements of education there.
(34:46):
And then as a bonus, what I would say you guys could do during independent time, let’s be real. Every day you’re not teachers. Sometimes you need a brain break. I know that was me. I was like, this is what y’all going to do today. There’s some coloring sheets over here. You got Black Wall Street board game, [00:35:00] here’s some flashcards. Maybe you consider allowing kids to interact with those types of games. And so, I love Black Wall Street, the board game, you’ve never heard of them. Go ahead and type in black wall street.com and you will see that this couple has worked hard to create resources to help us be able to learn more about Black Wall Street and how we can incorporate it in our classrooms. So I do have a special code. If you guys decide that this is something that you might want to take a flip at using in your class, then use [00:35:30] the Code Scholar 21 for 10% off your order. And so the financial flashcards there, that’s my son, Cayden. He’s seven old y’all. And we went through the flashcards the other day. Some of the stuff, I was like, wait a minute, hold up. I got that wrong. Lemme dial it back. Some of the things, it was really a learning opportunity for him. So just couple things that you guys can do.
(35:53):
And then in the chat you guys let me know what are some ways you can incorporate financial ed in your curriculum or some things that you [00:36:00] already do. And if you aren’t doing anything yet, has anything in this session, whether it was from Paris’s presentation, or my presentation sparked any new ideas for financial ed or financial literacy in your learning environment? So I know I was talking fast, I know we’re on a time crunch, but let me know in the chat, you can answer either of these questions. What are some ways you incorporate financial education into your curriculum? And has this session [00:36:30] sparked any new ideas for financial ed in your learning environment?
(36:42):
Okay. And I’ll let you guys, I’ll take a look as you post your responses, but we can go to the next slide so I can wrap up here. But yes, you guys, my specialties in education, well, within social studies, I really focus a lot on content, but I also very much so know how [00:37:00] important it is to incorporate financial literacy. And I think social studies and history is an awesome way to do that. Now if you’re looking for some more ideas for other subjects that is not social studies, please scan this QR code – I’ve actually put together a nice little slideshow where I came up with some different ideas that you can use whether you teach math, whether you teach science, whether you teach ELA, right? Oh, thank you, Alyssa. Thank you. You can follow me. You guys can stay connected with me by following me on social media on Instagram. [00:37:30] I’m on there most, most @socialstudiesscholar. You can invite me to speak or deliver professional development, and we can always work through that. And what that might look like. Maybe you don’t need it for financial literacy, but maybe you want you and your colleagues to learn some different ways you could teach reconstruction maybe. So just taking a flip on some different types of topics there. You can also email me at the email that is up there: [email protected], and you can visit my website for some different resources at https://socialstudiesscholar.com/.
Jesse Poquette (38:00):
[00:38:00] Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dee, we’ve heard a lot of awesome stuff there. And people are jumping in the chat talking about all the different ways and ideas they’re having to incorporate all of that into their classroom. Think they’re really using those historical events as pretext for bringing up a lot of financial literacy concepts, which is so, so smart, so important [00:38:30] to weave it into everything that you’re doing. But yeah, any questions for either of the panelists here, Dr. Woods or Ms. Forbes, anything. If you want to drop ’em in the chat here, any logistical questions or anything else, please put it in the chat.
(38:51):
And thank you, Wesley. Really sparked some great ideas. A lot [00:39:00] of thanks coming in. Lot of thanks. A lot of thanks. A lot of thanks. All right, awesome. Well, I know that we’re kind getting close to almost over time now, so if you do have questions, please put ’em in there. But I want to talk really quick. Next steps, obviously next steps. Check out Dee’s Instagram handle. I checked it out this [00:39:30] weekend. It is awesome. Check out Dr. Wood’s book. It is really amazing as well. And Paris, I love the comment you said in there that whenever you need to boost your mood, that you go and read the comments on Amazon, that you’re the only person that reads the comments to boost their mood. So that is a huge testament to the quality of the content of that book, and what an awesome resource it can be for your students.
(39:56):
I want to just really quickly also mention EVERFI’s [00:40:00] great financial resources for students at every single age: Vault for those elementary school students, FutureSmart for those middle school students. And we have a bevy of financial resources for their high school students with our EVERFI: Financial Literacy for High School as the kind of flagship course. So check all of those out, check out those resources, post your questions here, and continue to share the magic for the rest of Learn on today. So continue to follow Everly on all those socials [00:40:30] as well as Social Studies Scholar. But thank you so much for joining the session. Thank you, Deanna Forbes. Thank you Dr. Paris Woods. Thank you everyone for staying on and enjoy the rest of your day and week. Bye everyone.
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About the Webinar Featured Presenters:
Deana Forbes, Social Studies Curriculum Designer, The Social Studies Scholar. Deana Forbes, MAT has a background as a high school social studies teacher. Specializing in helping teachers incorporate Black History, stories and joy into their existing curriculum, she founded Social Studies Scholar. When she is not creating curriculum, she enjoys spending time with her 2 sons Grayson and Cayden.
Paris Woods, Ed.D., Harvard University, 20+ years in Education, #1 Best Selling Author of The Black Girl’s Guide to Financial Freedom.
Jesse Poquette, District Lead EVERFI