A New Brunswick teacher is hoping to set up her middle schoolers for success when it comes to financial literacy.
Angela Leger, at Forest Hills School in Saint John, teaches Grades 6, 7 and 8 students real-world skills in how to manage their money and plan for their financial future.
Growing up with parents who were entrepreneurs, Leger said she was taught financial stability and independence.
“Now, as a middle-school teacher, I see the need to instill these skills in my students,” she told Information Morning Saint John.
One big game of life
Each grade level learns a different part of financial literacy, starting in Grade 6. Those students focus on saving, budgeting, spending and also giving back to the community. Leger says it’s an introduction to what they’ll do in Grade 8, which is focused on entrepreneurship.
Grade 8 students will create their own business and sell and create things, topping it off with an entrepreneurship fair in April.
Grade 7 students are immediately thrown into the world of bills, jobs and debt.
Leger calls it “the game of life.” She said when the students walk into class, they’re no longer 12 and 13 years old — they are aged-up to 18-25.
“They’ve graduated from high school … dropped into the world,” she said, and “need to navigate it.”
It begins with the students picking jobs, starting salaries and lifestyles out of a hat. Some of the lifestyle options include married, divorced, single or living with a roommate.
The job choices range from minimum wage to higher paying jobs, said Leger, but depending on the job, students may also face the challenge of student loan repayment.
“For this project, it’s really important that students draw the lifestyles, the jobs, the salaries out of a hat, because students need to understand that life’s a mystery, you never know what’s going to happen,” said Leger.
“Just because you want to be a veterinarian, doesn’t mean that you’re going to be a veterinarian. It takes a lot of hard work, a lot of dedication, patience, and also you need to have the finances to do so, especially in today’s economy.”
Financial literacy night
Leger said the students love the project because they know that the math they’re learning is going to be useful to them in the future.
She said this type of math is already in the curriculum, but now, she’s teaching the concepts in a different way so students understand how the skills can be applied.
And Leger isn’t stopping with middle-schoolers. Forest Hills is hosting a financial literacy night Thursday that will include students from Grade 3 and up, along with their parents.
In the school’s theatre, the parent session will cover money tips, debt management, interest rates, setting up education funds and the importance of setting up a bank account at a young age.
The gym will have different stations set up for students that focus on spending, saving, budgeting and giving back to the community. Leger said the student portion will be interactive and will have students playing games and interacting with money.
“Financial literacy is needed in our schools more than ever before. We are becoming a cashless society and it shows. Students do not see money anymore. What they see is their adult swiping a card, and then it’s instant gratification,” she said.
“This is something that truly I hope that we really run with.”
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