Valley View Teaching 'Real World' Approach to Finance

The Valley View School District submitted this story on its new approaching to teaching students about personal finances:

Valley View School District 365U this year has changed what some had called “a paper and pencil approach” to teaching high school students about personal finance to a more rigorous “real world” approach.

“Our former program wasn’t rigorous enough and it wasn’t as current as it needed to be,” said Tammi Conn, VVSD’s Director of Career and Technical Education. “We need to keep current with the times by teaching our students how to safely use online banking for everything from paying bills to bank account reconciliation.  In addition, we weren’t giving the students an overview of the economy and their role within our economy.”

“So many people in the United States are not financially literate. More and more are losing their homes due to foreclosure because they had the wrong type of mortgage or someone sold them a house they really couldn’t afford,” added Deanna Benson, Bolingbrook High School’s Consumer Education Team Leader. “We have to help our kids understand that more isn’t always better and that spending everything you have right now doesn’t help the future.”

A required course for juniors and seniors at both Bolingbrook and Romeoville high schools, Personal Finance (formerly called Consumer Education) lasts just one semester. In that one semester, students will continue to learn how to budget; how to balance a checkbook; how to use a credit card; how to rent or buy an apartment, home or condo; how to look for and buy a car; and much more, but it will be in a much more in-depth and more interesting fashion.

For instance, during the first week of the class, students were required to build a budget for Homecoming expenses.

“We asked them to estimate the cost like how much will a girl spend on a dress or a boy spend on a suit or renting a tux? How much will they spend on gas? On jewelry? On dinner?” said Benson, adding they all divided their expenses by the minimum wage ($8.25) to determine how many hours they needed to work to pay for everything. “All of a sudden they realized ohmygosh this is going to cost a lot. We put it into the real world for them.”

This year’s curriculum will include a real-life experience with newly purchased “Virtual Business Personal Finance” software which will enable each student to create an on-line virtual life in which they must stay healthy, get an education, work, buy groceries, find a place to live, provide transportation for themselves, buy insurance, pay taxes and invest.

“They each have to live their personal lives with a good balance of work,  school, exercise and social life,” Conn said. “If they don’t, they will die and will have to start all over again.”

Also in the curriculum will be a new stock market game through which VVSD student groups will be able to invest play money and compete against other high school students around the country. Results will be based on whatever the stock market is doing at the time.

“We know that in the future they will have to be in some stocks if they want to build their wealth,” Benson said. “Students need to understand the stock market so they know how the stock market works and what kind of risk is involved.”

Eventually, VVSD hopes to push the personal finance class down to the sophomore level. But for now, this year’s juniors and seniors are getting quite an education in what could be one of their most important classes if they want to be successful in the future.

“Our goal is to have every student come out of this with a better knowledge of their role in society,” Conn said.