Palo Alto, CA –May 2, 2016 — Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF), a non-profit with a mission to provide a free personal finance education to all young people, is pleased to announce the winners of it’s Second Annual NGPF Teacher Innovator Award.  This award recognizes outstanding teachers who have developed their own projects and activities to engage and educate their students. NGPF received dozens of innovative and creative project submissions from high school and college educators. These projects were judged based on criteria including creativity, skill development and ease with which other teachers can bring into their classroom. 

Each of the winners in the Best Activity/Project category will be receiving $1,000 from NGPF and will appear in an upcoming NGPF podcast to discuss their projects:

• Lisa Bender, Personal Finance Educator at Southern Garrett High School in Oakland, Maryland, submitted a project “Prepping for Success: Exploring College and Career” which which takes a student-centered approach to career exploration and offers choices (using a Tic-Tac-Toe game board) for how students present their work.

• David Soldner, a Teacher at the Fox Lake Correctional Institution in Fox Lake, Wisconsin uses celebrities as a hook to engage his students in his “Celebrity Income Tax Return” activity. Here are the scenarios that he created: Serena Williams, Kate Upton, Salma Hayek, Jessica Alba and the Widower #1.

• Danielle Trouve, a Business Teacher at Chelmsford High School in Chelmsford, Massachusetts uses her activity “Egg and Spoon Insurance and Probability” to bring the concept of insurance to life for her students. What an eggcellent idea (sorry I couldn’t resist)!

Each of the winners of the 2016 NGPF Teacher Innovator Award – Honorable Mention will be receiving $250 from NGPF and have an opportunity to discuss their projects in an upcoming NGPF podcast also. The winners are:

• Kerri Herrild, Business Teacher at De Pere High School in De Pere, Wisconsin, engages her students’ parents in her “Personal Finance Goal-Setting and Expense Tracking project.”

• Amanda Volz, Business Teacher at St. Clair High School in St. Clair, Michigan uses the “Shark Tank” format to have her students compete head-to-head in a competition where each is pitching a publicly held company in “Company Competition.”

• Brian Yanizeski, Business Teacher from Fox Chapel Area High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania developed an online “Home Buying Project” that has a few unique aspects, which include having his students participate in an online forum to share their knowledge.

• Nancy Labricciosa, Business Teacher at Plymouth-Whitemarsh Senior High School in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania has developed a comprehensive and holistic “Retirement Investing Project” in which students see the link between their youthful decisions and their standard of living during their golden years.

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About Next Gen Personal Finance

Next Gen Personal Finance (NGPF) is a non-profit organization that believes all young people deserve a free, high quality education to develop their financial capability. Thousands of teachers use NGPF as their core curriculum, to supplement their existing curriculum and/or to further hone their teaching craft through NGPF Professional Development activities.

NGPF provides educators with a “one-stop shop” for all of their personal finance needs (all are FREE! and always will be):

Content

• Lesson Library:  70+ curated, comprehensive lessons divided into 11 units
• Case Studies:  Ten case studies which allow your students to apply their knowledge to real-life situations
• Data Crunch: Students hone their analytical skills with graphs and data tables infused with personal finance concepts
• Video Library: Looking for that three minute video on investing to engage your students? Find it and dozens of others in the curated NGPF Video Library

Professional Development

• Virtual PD: 5-7x weekly virtual PDs provide educators with ideas and resources to engage in their students in specific content areas, including paying for college, credit, checking unit updates and insurance
• Podcasts: The weekly NGPF Podcast Show features interviews with personal finance experts, including educators, journalists, company founders and other leaders in the field
• NGPF Blog: Updated daily, provides educators with case studies, questions of the day and finds creative ways to incorporate current events into your classroom

Contact:  Tim Ranzetta, founder of Next Gen Personal Finance, at tim@ngpf.org

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.