The vast majority of our schools in the US do not have a mandated, stand-alone personal finance requirement for graduation. AND if they do have a mandate of some form of personal finance education, it falls to CTE, Math, Social Studies, and Business teachers to meet that requirement. In this environment we need as many cross-curricular activities as possible to meet all of our goals in the time we are given.
A Simple StartUp or any entrepreneurship project can go a long way to helping with that. In each project you have the potential for crossover with:
Algebra, Geometry
Expository, Persuasive, Creative & Descriptive writing
Reading and Literacy
Economics
Psychology
Wood-working
Computer skills and design
Theater and Film
Those are just a small list of examples where a large entrepreneurship project could be an overarching focus for your school or students. See if other teachers want to get on board with you and use the same theme to direct their own classes.
One topic I didn’t mention in the list above is personal finance, though this perhaps has some of the largest cross-over with regards to the content. How so you might ask?
By doing a business project and actually starting it, students will be forced to experiment and learn topics such as:
- Budgeting
- Prioritizing spending
- Tracking cash flow
- Evaluating purchases for the best value
- Investing with the purpose of growth
- Negotiation
- Building an Emergency Fund
- Paying taxes
- Navigating Insurance
- Keeping accurate records
- Delayed Gratification
I’ve actually found that my personal finance students learn more about personal finance during their business projects than they do in our other classes because they now have something to apply this knowledge to. Too often, personal finance lessons can seem irrelevant to students who do not yet make a lot of decisions or have responsibility over their own finances yet.
Let’s be honest, if we all ran our personal finances like the way we run a business, the average American would probably be in much better financial shape than they are right now.
If you don’t have the luxury of teaching a standalone personal finance or entrepreneurship class, consider including a Simple StartUp project as part of your current class offerings and use it as the theme to focus your other curricular efforts on. Your students will still gain the majority of the skills and knowledge that they normally would, PLUS all of the amazing lessons that come from a business project
If you do a cross-curricular project like this, we want to hear about it! Share your story at www.thesimplestartup.com/stories or post on our Facebook group www.facebook.com/groups/thesimplestartup. You can also ask questions and get great advice from other Simple StartUp Educators in our Community Group!
