That is a wrap! We just concluded the 2021-22 school year with Berkeley High seniors walking the stage last Saturday. As this school year comes to a close, I want to take a few minutes to celebrate the victories and growth of my personal finance program.
1. In 2019 I created a year long personal finance elective for seniors at Berkeley High School. We just finished the 2nd year of this program, which is the first year the class ran in person and ran for the entire school year. Last year we were online and students had a reduced course load. 57 of our new graduates now enter the world financially armed.
2. Next year my program is expanding from 2 sections to 3!
3. There were many individual victories inside my class. One student opened a checking and savings accounts for the first time (when previously using check cashing for paychecks, yikes!). Students opened Roth IRAs and started buying the S&P500. One student opened an I Bond account. Many students learned how to master their budgets and felt so empowered they were teaching students outside of my class. Students started building credit scores and opened savings accounts that aligned with their goals. And so much more. I did a lot of one-on-one work with students and their accounts. Many of these students come from low income backgrounds and our work (theirs and mine) has been so powerful and potentially changed their entire financial trajectory.
4. Inside my AP Macroeconomics class, 166 students got my mini personal finance unit: Road to Financial Freedom were they learned budgeting, banking, savings & High Yield Savings Accounts, credit scores, debt & credit cards and investing/building wealth.
5. Over the summer, 6 out of the 7 economics teachers at Berkeley High School are getting together to collaborate around the personal finance content being taught in these classes and I am being paid to train these teachers on my Road to Financial Freedom content. Most of these teachers feel ill equipped to teach investing so that will be my main focus. I am so excited about this opportunity because my reach is only about 200 students per year but by training other teachers and giving them the resources they need, I now have the potential to impact 740 students a year! To have the impact that I envision, a large part of my work will have to be through training other teachers and this is my first opportunity.
6. I had the pleasure of collaborating with two community members Kate Campbell-King from North Berkeley Wealth Management and Stephen Paik on how the Berkeley community can support my personal finance class. We worked together to create mock interviews for my personal finance students. In my class, students found a job board for a career that interested them post college, as an internship or post trade school. Then they wrote a cover letter and resume tailored to that job board. Since the students did not have all the qualifications for the job, they had to lean on their passion and reworking their existing experience to this position. Over the course of 2 days, 24 community members conducted 50 minute interviews and coaching sessions with each of my students. A vast number of my students said this experience was the most impactful of the year, especially for my shy female students who struggle owning their accomplishments and talking about themselves.
I have many visions and changes to enact for next year. I really appreciate all of your support. and am incredibly grateful to be doing this work.
Disclaimer: I am an educator, not your personal financial advisor. Please make sure to do your own research before moving forward with any actions discussed in this newsletter.
Know that all investments involve some form of risk and there is no guarantee that you will be successful in making, saving, or investing money; nor is there any guarantee that you won’t experience any loss when investing. Past performance does not guarantee future performance. Always remember to make smart decisions and do your own research!
