|
It’s a brisk Charleston, West Virginia morning and Melissa Sears is eyeing a basket full of toys on clearance at a Toys"R"Us near her home. She finds the manager and negotiates with him to sell the entire lot of toys to her for $30. "There was about $1000 worth of toys in that basket," she says afterwards.
But this teacher isn’t shopping for herself. She’s shopping for next fall’s financial literacy class materials. For the past seven years, Ms. Sears, a Capital High School Special Education teacher, has been teaching financial literacy concepts by helping her students run a holiday store inside the high school. And she knows that the best deals to restock her inventory for next year are right now. "You know that is something I teach my students. Shop out of season. Be wise with your money. It’s amazing to watch my students price an item because they see the retail price, then the sale price, and then they know what we actually paid for the item, and it connects for them, that if they wait and plan, they can budget and make their money go a lot farther."
 Learning about money and how to be wise with their money is just one of the lessons Ms. Sears teaches her students through the holiday store. Students learn all the aspects of running a retail operation. Each student must apply for a job in the store, and only those with experience from previous years qualify for managerial positions. Students are responsible for the inventory, for managing the store’s cash flow, working the register and making sure they can count out correct change. The students must also deal with vendors, local businesses who put out inventory on consignment to the students, or vendors who give incentives. The student manager’s share in the store’s profits and they have to learn how to calculate both their gross receipts and the store’s net profit on goods sold.
To help students learn how to pay vendors and use banking services, Ms. Sears uses lesson 6 in the Practical Money Skills for Life curriculum. The students also explore the site’s budgeting and saving calculators to learn how to manage their money and see in an interesting and interactive way how saving and budgeting even a small amount of money adds up over time.
"This project really belongs to the students," says Ms. Sears. "This store is really theirs, and it’s very empowering for many of my students. These are students with below standard I.Q.s who will not receive a standard diploma. Many of them are on Social Security, but many of them are capable of working, if we can help empower them with practical skills. Being able to handle, and count money, is something they will do everyday."
On using the Practical Money Skills for Life web site in her curriculum, Ms. Sears says "there is so much there. It’s really amazing that it’s all free. My students love the interactive games and calculators. They’re learning but they don’t know they’re learning. For them, it’s fun."
|
Melissa Sears
