Welcome to Next Gen Personal Finance's
November 2016 Newsletter
Welcome to the latest edition of the NGPF Newsletter (#25 for those of you scoring at home). With Thanksgiving only a week away, this month's newsletter focuses on all that we are thankful for here at NGPF: the educators we work with every day, the resources we curate and create and the opportunity to develop critical money skills in the youth of America.
Happy Thanksgiving!
The NGPF Team Jessica, Laura, Sonia and Tim
What's New With NGPF Professional Development?
Here are two numbers that represent our recent professional development activities:
211 and 22,000
For those of you who think of NGPF as strictly a content and resource provider, we wanted to be sure that you were aware of our professional development offerings too (yes, they are all FREE):
Customized Professional Development (contact us for more details)
Still wondering about those two numbers? Since October 1st, we provided 211 hours of PD while traveling more than 22,000 miles to deliver many of these activities in-person. Thank you to all the teachers who attended our workshops, webinars and PLCs. Your commitment to excellence, encouragement and enthusiasm inspire us on a daily basis!
We are so thankful when we get the opportunity to share Next Gen Personal Finance resources with the educator community! Our favored workshop format leads to dozens of teachers experiencing "aha" moments, as they explore our website. These "aha" moments quickly progress to fevered conversations about how they plan to use NGPF resources in their classroom the next day!
In a little over two years, our successful grassroots effort has gotten NGPF resources into thousands of classrooms in all fifty states. We know that when teachers find resources that engage their students, well, they like to share their enthusiasm with other teachers. We have clearly benefited from this phenomenon and thank you for being our most effective marketers!
But (and there is always a but), there are still tens of thousands of teachers and millions of students that we want to reach. If you're passionate about financial literacy and spreading the word about NGPF, our Idea of the Month is for you to share this NGPF Scavenger Hunt with your teacher network (or lead your next PD session using it).
What Resources Are You Thankful For?
I queried the Next Gen Personal Finance team earlier today (with deadline fast approaching) to get their answers to the question above. Here is what I heard:
Sonia is thankful for the takeaways she gained from the NGPF Lesson: 6.3: Cost of Commuting. She used this knowledge to purchase a 2016 Honda Civic (and she got a great deal!).
Laura is thankful for the NGPF Lesson 4.3: Credit Scores. Reviewing this lesson led Laura to rein in her credit utilization to under 30%. As a result, she saw a sharp jump in her credit score. Well done!
Jessica is thankful that she got the opportunity to craft the NGPF Investing Unit(two weeks before the birth of her daughter). This exercise forced her to present information in a way that high school students would understand which deepened her knowledge too!
Tim is thankful that he gets to search on Google everyday to find resources that teachers find useful. His favorite interactive (and the favorite of many teachers and students too!) is Spentwhich gives students a "real-life" perspective of what it feels like to live "paycheck to paycheck."
Tweet out a link to your favorite NGPF resource with the hashtags #NGPF#Thankful and your entry may appear in an upcoming NGPF Blog post!
Featured Educator Podcast: Emily Iverson
I first learned about educator Emily Iverson's work in this glowing article about the growth in the personal finance program at her school, Mukwonago High School in Wisconsin. I wanted to learn more about the teaching approach that made her class SO popular. After our podcast (see below), I realized how thankful her students must be for the "real-life" skills that they develop in her course.
Emily shares her teaching philosophy in our conversation on the NGPF podcastand also answers questions that many educators will find useful:
How did you go about creating an online personal finance course?
How do you manage and assess students in an online course environment?
What are the most important topics that you cover in your personal finance course?
What steps did you take to increase the popularity of your personal finance course?
Enjoy!
Thanks for the Feedback!
We love getting feedback from our educators (and students too!). Why? Quite simply, it ensures that our resources continue to get better and meet the needs of you and your students. This feedback ranges from new product ideas, to links to awesome articles, recaps of how an NGPF lesson worked in your classroom to a heads-up that the formatting in one of our documents isn't working as intended.
Here are a few of the awesome educators whose timely and specific feedback made us better as an organization:
Brent Gostomski, Stevens Point Area Senior High School (Stevens Point, Wisconsin)
Brian Page, Reading High School (Reading, Ohio)
Charles Kafoglis, Incarnate Word Academy (Houston, Texas)
Hope Dunbar, Central Senior High School (Victoria, Virginia)
Joey Running, West Albany High School (Albany, Oregon)
John Schetinski, Maple Grove High School (Maple Grove, Minnesota)
Laura Falk, Fairbanks High School (Milford Center, Ohio)
Laurie Gardner, Marine City High School (Marine City, Michigan)
Lisa Whitling, Prairie High School (Vancouver, Washington)
Lynn Amey, South Burlington High School (South Burlington, Vermont)
Patricia Mete, Pomperaug High School (Southbury, Connecticut)
Terry Hayes, Lafayette High School (Wildwood, Missouri)
Community Activity Next Gen Personal Finance actively supports the financial literacy community through workshops, sponsorships of conferences and teacher professional development events. See below for a representative sample of events that we have attended in 2016. Please stop by and say hello if you plan to be at any of our upcoming events!
In 2016, we have provided financial support of over $30,000 to support teacher professional development. If you organize or attend a workshop and are looking for sponsors, please let me know by emailing me at tim@nextgenpersonalfinance.org.
Upcoming 2016 Events
December 10, 2016: Rhode Island Financial Capability Conference (Providence, RI)
Previous 2016 Events
November 11, 2016: Vermont Jump$tart Educators Conference (Burlington, VT)
November 8, 2016: Working in Support of Education (WISE) Conference (New York, NY)
November 5-7, 2016: Jump$tart National Educators Conference (Dallas, TX)
October 22nd and 29th, 2016: DC Public School Teacher Training (Washington, DC)
