What if schools consistently failed to teach the most important lesson?
Every year, more high school graduates struggle with money, ending up with far too many bills and far too few paychecks. Clearly, the best way to prevent this from happening is for schools to offer better financial literacy programs.
Unfortunately, it’s equally clear that the standard mathematics curriculum does not prepare students for important activities like budgeting, saving, and even balancing a checkbook.
The good news is that teaching teens about money is easier than you might think. With the help and resources of EVERFI, teachers and administrators can transform their classrooms into places where students learn the financial literacy skills teens need to survive life after high school. To learn more about how to transform your own school, keep reading to discover how to teach teenagers about money as early as today!
Main Takeaways
- Teachers must step up because parents alone cannot provide proper financial education to their children.
- Most of the country is financially illiterate, showcasing the need for financial literacy lessons.
- Providing teens with financial literacy lessons early on will help them become better at managing money without getting into debt or destroying their credit.
- Combining custom lesson plans with educational technology solutions is the best way to teach teens the value of money.
Table of Contents
- Complementing Parental Guidance
- Incorporating Financial Literacy in the Classroom
- Inclusivity: Accounting for Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds
- EVERFI Can Help Incorporate Lessons Into Your Classroom
Complementing Parental Guidance
Teaching teens financial responsibility is easier than ever, thanks to the comprehensive suite of financial education lessons from EVERFI. However, it is important for the lessons learned in the classroom to continue at home. After all, home is where students will put their growing financial literacy skills to the test by earning extra money, saving for things they want, and even contributing to household expenses once they get a job. Administrators can get community “buy-in” for the new or strengthened focus on financial literacy by hosting events such as FAFSA Night, where counselors help families navigate the financial aid process and learn a few personal finance skills along the way.
Sadly, parents won’t always be able to help. According to the World Economic Forum, the majority of American adults are financially illiterate. Because of this, some of them may push back against financial literacy programs because they don’t want their children asking money-related questions that their parents cannot answer. This underscores the need to teach teens about money in the classroom, effectively breaking a cycle of ignorance that could easily become crippling generational poverty. These programs allow teachers to do what they do best: give students the skills they need to improve their lives.
Incorporating Financial Literacy in the Classroom
Once you understand just how many adults in the country are illiterate about money management, it’s easy to understand the need to offer financial literacy programs in K-12. However, it’s much harder to figure out how to teach teens about money. Just what can you do in the classroom to drive these lessons home, especially if you teach something other than math?
The first thing you should consider is conducting engaging activities, such as mock stock markets, investment games, and real-world budgeting challenges. Students often respond well to these activities because they bring math to life, emphasizing that a solid understanding of the subject can help them make more money and live a more comfortable life. This understanding blossoms through different hands-on activities that reinforce mathematical concepts like calculating compound interest and calculating percentages for tips and taxes (tax simulations are great for teaching the latter).
Older students may benefit from fundraising activities that give them a chance to raise and spend money on a good cause, and they might also benefit from field trips to financial institutions to learn more about managing money. Regardless of the subject you teach, the best way to incorporate lessons about money in your high school is through embedded online and in-person activities via educational technology companies like EVERFI.
Inclusivity: Accounting for Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds
Teachers and administrators have their hearts in the right place when teaching teens about money. However, if those money management lessons don’t account for students having different socioeconomic backgrounds, then the school may accidentally be excluding much of its student body. Fortunately, there are a few easy ways that school districts can create more inclusive environments that account for different socioeconomic backgrounds.
For example, ensure that in your lessons, you don’t assume that students automatically come from privileged backgrounds or have access to robust financial resources. After reviewing basic economic concepts, make sure to use diverse case studies throughout the lessons that showcase a wide range of financial situations and challenges and emphasize how resourcefulness and creativity can help students overcome many challenges, regardless of their socioeconomic status.
It’s important to make students aware of local community resources and programs that may help them and others achieve financial stability. Finally, be sure to emphasize that financial success looks different for everyone. Rather than focusing on accumulating a certain amount of wealth, students should instead develop their own financial goals and then work diligently toward accomplishing them.
This can be hard to do, especially because students are oversaturated with media trying to tell them what success looks like. But with the right lessons, students can see through such messaging and focus on achieving financial success on their own terms.
EVERFI Can Help Incorporate Resources Into Your Classroom
It can be difficult to find enough quality (& free) resources to teach teenagers about money. Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone. EVERFI offers a number of instructional resources as part of its Financial Literacy Collection that you can embed into your classrooms. These free, research-based, standards-aligned courses allow students of all ages to get a better handle on how to manage money and ultimately grow their wealth.
Available courses can help students build credit, invest wisely, pay for college, and so much more. With EVERFI, you get a bespoke learning tool that can always be customized to meet the needs of your own students. EVERFI courses are aligned with Jump$tart National Standards in K-12 Personal Finance and come with the prestigious ISTE seal.
As Diana Pate, HS teacher from Rockwell, TX, said, “Financial literacy is important for students because it helps them learn how to manage their money effectively and helps them learn to plan for financial hardships and real life. Financial literacy is a necessary life skill that I wish I would have learned in school. With EVERFI in your corner, teaching teens financial responsibility has never been easier!
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Chris Snellgrove is a college writing professor with over 15 years of experience as a teacher, professor, and instructor. He’s primarily taught at the high school and college levels, but has also led ESL programs for primary school students. In addition to his teaching experience, he has extensive experience with SEO, small business optimization, and ghostwriting for hundreds of clients in all different fields.