In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week 2015, NGPF is celebrating the hard work and commitment to personal finance education exhibited by our nation’s teachers by featuring just a few members of our NGPF educator community. 

Featured Teacher: Kate Ivers, Business Education Teacher

School: Rockford High School, Rockford, Minnesota

What’s your favorite part of teaching personal finance? 

I love teaching personal finance! The best thing about teaching Personal Finance is that the content is instantly transferable to life.  Personal Finance helps teach healthy habits relating to budgeting, credit ratings, and interest rates and life skills about college, loan applications, and taxes.  I want to help my students learn to save money in order to become a millionaire by the time they are ready to retire!

If you had to give a first year personal finance teacher a piece of advice, what would it be?

If I were to give one piece of advice to first year Personal Finance teachers, it would be that they should always try to relate the information to real life examples.  Don’t be afraid to use yourself as an example! I talk about my college loans, investing, and vehicle buying in the lessons all the time.  I feel that it helps students to see that what we are learning can be used immediately in an environment outside of school.  PS: Real life examples are GREAT when they come from guest speakers too – invite in members from the community: bankers, college reps, car salesmen, etc.

What’s been your greatest accomplishment as a personal finance teacher?

The greatest accomplishment of being a Personal Finance teacher is delivering content to students and helping them understand that they can actually use the information.  Sometimes students don’t think the material they are learning in school can be used later in life; having students return from college or the work-force and telling me how much they remember (and use!) the knowledge from Personal Finance is an amazing feeling.

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.