Finding Top Financial Literacy Lessons for High School Students

How has our guide been able to help someone in a real-life professional situation? Let’s now turn to an example of when a professional successfully used our financial literacy lessons for high school students in their own job:

Kirk has been an economics teacher at Kennedy High School for 8 years, and he currently has 31 seniors divided into two classes near the end of the day. All of them are getting ready for graduation. He felt a great responsibility to prepare these students as much as he possibly could in regards to readying them for post-graduation money management, so he decided to design financial literacy lessons for high school students that would be especially useful to them. He was simply a macroeconomics teacher, though, so he wasn’t sure how to proceed with a personal finance education program – which is what led him to seek out some qualified help.

He handed out a paper survey to the students that had some simple financial questions one day, realizing that this group had almost zero knowledge when it came to personal finance. In that moment, he understood that he would need to source some easy-to-learn material that’s designed specifically for beginners.

Kirk was certain about at least one matter: these students were very inexperienced with the topic at hand. The first idea he had for this endeavor was to do the knowledge building himself, and teach them concepts of money management directly somehow. He was hoping that these students would rise to a considerable level of proficiency by the end of the year. At that early moment, he knew that maintaining a focus on basic principles would be the smartest move for the initial financial literacy lessons for high school.

So far, Kirk had both his short-term and long-term goals in mind. The following decision would need to be practical: what should the pace and format be for this program? Ideally, he would get a course that’s divided into portions that are easy to individually absorb. This understanding drove him to opt for financial literacy lessons for high school students that are self-paced.  Learn more about NFEC financial literacy lesson plans.

Kirk quickly understood why we need to teach financial literacy in schools and that his concept for the financial literacy lessons for high school was still a bit too broad in its focus, especially since he just wanted to get the ball rolling for these students. He really needed to make the core focus of the program narrower, so he designed the first segment as a student loan-centered course.

The ideal solution for these students would be money management lessons for high school students that successfully communicate this vital knowledge, but could still be functional with their wildly uncoordinated schedules. Clearly, it wouldn’t at all be viable to invite the students to one location at the same time on a weekday, so he decided to opt for a modular, flexible type of course.

Kirk certainly had enough skills and confidence to educate this group directly, but – if he was really going to achieve her goals – this path wouldn’t be the best. What he needed at that point was some assistance – a little help from someone who could build a financial literacy lessons for high school students offering that was still fun and engaging. Fortunately, he successfully got in touch with an educator who led financial literacy for high school students in an neighboring county.  They were a Certified Financial Education Instructor who had the right skills to incorporate some experience into the financial literacy lessons for high school.

This particular group of students was made up of 31 participants, and 30 of those individuals finished the course in its entirety – leading to a success rate of 97%. Once the course had been completed, all of the participants who reached the end filled out a questionnaire, and 96% of those individuals reported that their money management knowledge grew a “significant” amount as a result of the program. At the end of it all, Kirk drafted a detailed report that outlined the outcomes so he would be able to prove how successful the money management lessons for high school students were.