“We are doing our youth a great disservice and leaving them ill-equipped to handle adult life if we don’t teach them basic personal finance.”

Terri Fisher-Carson, CPA, teaches business law; business management; principles of business and marketing; word processing; and digital input technologies at Stonewall Jackson High School in Manassas, Virginia—and she incorporates personal finance lessons into each and every one of her classes. “Any kid who passes through my doors is going to get the basics of personal finance,” she says. “Financial literacy is a critical social and economic issue right now.”

Making personal finance real

Terri uses the free resources provided by the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) and Apple Federal Credit Union to help teach her students the ABCs of personal finance. Her lessons also include a variety of real-life experiences. She invites guest speakers to the classroom and arranges for her students to visit community businesses. For the past few years, her classes have visited Cici’s Pizza, where the managers give students a tour and discuss how they manage the business.

She also uses games, including one based on the popular game show “Jeopardy.”  Financial literacy becomes personal when the students are engaged,” she says.

Preparing students for the future

Terri enjoys watching her students learn as the semester goes by. “When they first come in, many can’t balance their checkbook,” she says, “and by the end of the year they can.” She also helps them learn how to apply for college and do their taxes. She even helps walk students through their tax forms and teaches them how to use Turbo Tax. “These things are just the basics,” she says. “If more people had these skills, our economy would be in much better shape.”

Outside of her day-to-day class work, Terri has been developing a seminar for high school seniors called “What You Should Know Before You Go,” which will cover topics such as budgeting, saving, investing, credit and loans. She plans to teach the seminar to seniors this year in partnership with interested business leaders in the community as well as other business teachers at Stonewall Jackson High School.

The role of the National Financial Literacy Challenge

Terri participated in the National Financial Literacy Challenge because she thought it would be a great way to pique her students’ interest. And it did. One of her students, Olivia Moran, scored 100 percent and received a scholarship award funded by Charles Schwab Foundation. The Challenge is important, Terri says, because “it gives students some idea of the financial issues they’ll have to address once they are no longer living with Mom and Dad.”

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