I meant to strike while the iron was hot, while this NY Times article, I’m 29 and I never learned how money works. It’s time to fix that., was all over my social media feed in mid-October. Whelp — It’s 7 weeks later, and here I am. Better late than never I suppose (that’s why Tim is the master blogger around NGPF, not me).

I like that the article exists, but I don’t like the idea of just giving it to my (hypothetical) students to read. It covers FAR too many topics in too much detail to be a concentrated “intro to personal finance,” and it seems silly to have your students read and take notes on it if they’ve never learned any of this stuff before (how will they even know what is “important?) or if they’ve learned it all before (why are they taking notes if they already know all this?). So, what would picky Jessica do with this awesome article? Here are a few of my ideas:

1. Pull out the questions (sometimes they have follow-up questions embedded), and use it as a pre-test at the beginning of the term and a post-test at the end. Of course, be sure to remove any topics you know your course doesn’t cover. Because I can’t resist, here it is in “test” format.
2. Toward the end of your course, give your students just the questions, have them write answers, and then give them the article. Students then compare their own responses to those of money expert Ron Lieber. If their responses match, great. If they don’t match, have them respond with how they’d edit their own answer or why their answer is actually better than Lieber’s. I’ve made you a worksheet (the holidays have come early!).
3. Turn the questions, and Lieber’s responses, into individual cards. Toward the end of your course, once the topics have been taught, each pair of students divvies up their stack of cards and takes turns “quizzing” each other. I even made the cards for you, though I admit they could use some polishing up a bit. I just threw them together in a hurry.

OK, I’ve successfully spent way longer on this than I ever intentioned, but perhaps you’ve now got a ready-made way to use a trending article (admittedly, from 7 weeks ago) in your classroom. How cool is that?

About the Author

Jessica Endlich

When I started working at Next Gen Personal Finance, it's as though my undergraduate degree in finance, followed by ten years as an educator in an NYC public high school, suddenly all made sense.