Teaching financial literacy to teens has captured the interest of many individuals from various walks of life. If you are one of them, this page is an excellent place to start. The following case history offers a prime example:

Genevieve Owens was a retired nurse with a lot of time on her hands, so she was volunteering at the Youth Center. Her interactions with the teens had given her a keen interest in providing them with a financial education to get them started down a road toward financial wellness in adulthood. As a nurse she had done lots of trainings, but she knew very little about teaching financial literacy to teens. She did some due diligence research and learned that there were lots of programs out there – but only one that offered the eight key steps for doing the process right. She had teens at the Youth Center fill out a short survey. The information they were interested in getting was how to pay for college.

Genevieve now knew that the teens had reached the age where they were concerned about paying for college. But questioned how to teach teens about money most effectively.  She hit on a current goal of giving them some tools and resources to send them on their way toward funding higher education. Her first notion was to help them get to Level 3 on Webb’s Depth of Knowledge – Strategic Thinking – in regard to college funding. Across the long-term, Genevieve hoped to do even more, moving them to higher stages of learning.

Keeping her first objective in the forefront and her long-term vision on the back burner, Genevieve turned to deciding how to deliver the instruction. Because effectively teaching financial literacy to teens requires meeting them on their own terms, she decided online delivery with self-directed activities would be best for her target audience’s needs.

The next phase of teaching financial literacy to teens required Genevieve to choose a few age-appropriate topics on which to focus. Since the kids were anxious to learn how to pay for college, she decided the financial literacy topics selected would present information about sticking with a budget, figuring the ROI on higher education and how it relates to career planning, and several different approaches to funding a college education.

Genevieve was faced with a further challenge: who would undertake teaching financial literacy to teens? She needed a qualified educator with pedagogical and personal finance credentials. Genevieve went directly to the NFEC, who were able to connect her with a CFEI (Certified Financial Education Instructor) – financial literacy teacher certification – who had graduated from their program with top marks. She made contact with this woman and hired her to help develop and deliver the online materials.

Locating a top-notch financial literacy curriculum for high school students was Genevieve’s next task. She wanted something aligned with teaching and financial education standards, independent and compliant with all regulations. Genevieve found the qualities she sought in a curriculum that had just-in-time learning features and a high-quality design team, and was suitably scaffolded for teaching financial literacy to teens.

Genevieve invited 36 teens from the Youth Center to take the online course she and the CFEI developed. Out of those 36, 89% (32) actually completed the whole program. The course was designed with pretest and post-test containing the exact same questions, and the teens had improved their knowledge levels by an average of 35% after completing the coursework. Genevieve was highly satisfied with her first effort at teaching financial literacy to teens. She reported the data in a brief summary and sent it to the local radio station in the hope that they would publicize the results.