Credit Card Minimum

One of my favorite projects so far in Financial Algebra has been on Credit Cards. I had found a Personal Finance Project Resource Book that was created through the Connecticut State Department of Education. The project is on "Paying the Minimum" and essentially how long it will take to pay off a credit card if you are only to pay the minimum amount. I stress with the Students that this is IF you do not charge anything else onto the card (which most people do not do). I felt it was pretty eye-opening to them. I modified a few things from the original project and expected this from the students. I will probably change a few things for the next time around (up the minimum payment) - I felt a little rushed putting it together with midterms right around the corner. I also was finding that it was really important to be able to provide an example.

Below are some pictures of a few of the projects that were turned in. I love that students are getting experience with Sheets and learning how to use it to their advantage. This is the second project they have had in which they used Sheets and had to link it to the project with a QR code!!

      

Life isn't work

Lately, my husband has been hassling me a bit because whenever I'm home (after we put our daughter to bed), I'm always working. With 2 new classes, prepping a course for the team, and department chair duties, there never seems to be enough time during my work day to get things done. So I use the last few hours of the day to try to power through things. I know I should prioritize my family time more (I've gotten better about not doing so much work on the weekends!), but it's so difficult feeling the crazy pressure and time frames of a 4x4.

Yesterday afternoon I got a call from a colleague - I had to silence it as I was finishing up planning with another teacher. At 10 o'clock in the evening, I got a text stating that a colleague, who retired just over a year ago, had a massive heart attack. They were in the hospital, but as of that evening hadn't regained consciousness. I'm hoping to find out more details today since they were going to go visit.

At this point, I'm just baffled. I'm totally bummed about this news. It really puts life into perspective and brings back to the forefront what's most important. For me, that's not my work. I love what I do and I love working with students and teaching them about life. But that can't come at the expense of my life and my family.  So, it's going to be a crazy next 9 weeks, but I've got to stop bringing so much work home (both physically and mentally) and start focusing more on my family, since they truly are what matter the most to me!

Loan Amortization

On the heels of starting the next Financial Algebra chapter on Automobile Ownership, I decided to do a little research into loan amortization schedules. This lesson serves two purposes:

1. Teaching the kids the math and formulas on how loan payments are split between principal and interest, and
2. Showing the students how to use Sheets/Excel to do the math for you

I feel both of these will be valuable skills that they should know. I find too often that students do not know all the advantages of Excel, so if I can show them just a few I'll call that a win!

So,  as I was starting to work the math behind the lesson, I began with the Monthly Payment Formula:

I had to check if this was the monthly payment the loan calculator gave; it was! Next, I started a Google Sheet to begin work for the amortization schedule. Interest was calculated by taking the balance and multiplying it by the "monthly" rate (the rate given is the annual percentage rate so you have to divide that by 12). Principal is found by subtracting the interest from the monthly payment and the balance by taking the previous balance and subtracting that payments principal. So easy to do once you tell Sheets what to do - first payment was done and then you drag the rest down and watch the magic happen!!

I also remembered from my business classes being able to set a formula in Excel to find the payment (not having to input the crazy thing above). So, I used that also to see if it worked - it does. Except that it gave the answer as a negative?? Not sure why, but I'll look into that when I have more time. 

I'm excited for the opportunity to share all this with my class next week. I hope they find this unit enjoyable!!

9 Days of Financial Algebra

We are completing the 9th day of school. I've enjoyed this course and the knowledge it can provide to students and am so excited for the school year. But, I've also been a little disappointed.

On the first day, we had students balance a checking account just to see where they were at. I was amazed at how many did not get the correct balance in the end (all the more reason they should be in this course!). Many didn't have the correct check numbers and didn't know how to handle a voided check - not too big of a deal - so I made sure to go over in more detail about that. I also had students complete a survey to just get an idea of how others manage their finances. Of the 72 surveyed, 19 still use a hand-written register and 22 stated they used some software or app. Students were only allowed to interview one person under the age of 25 and only one person per household. I saw 2 surveys that they clearly interviewed a person from each generation - balance by hand, use an app, don't at all. I would imagine as this current generation grows, more and more will just depend on the balance the bank tells them. That scares me!

As we wrap up our first unit, students had a project they had to complete. They could choose 1 of 4 topics, and it was either a presentation or a paper. We designed this awesome rubric on what we expected and how they would be graded. So many have been just basic information. Since we gave 2 days of class time (almost 3 hours) for researching and putting it together, I think I was expecting better. Only a few are MLA format. They were supposed to be a minimum of 2 pages (that's it!!) and several are just over a page. Is this what English experiences with essays? I'm going to have to monitor them a lot more with future projects that's for sure.

On a positive note, students are asking great questions, so I'm loving that. They are curious and want to learn more. I'm hoping that continues as we move into more topics.

Amazing Department!

I have an AMAZING department! We added 3 teachers to our department this year, and 3.5 last year. Our growth in the number of students and section numbers has been great.

Going into my 11th year of teaching, I actually have the second most teaching experience in our department. My team is young! It's scary (because I'm not anymore) and exciting, and not common. But that youth brings so many ideas and willingness and hard workers. And I love them - they are my family!

With that background, I also remember what it was like being new to the profession/site: nervous and poor! The past two years I've given small gifts to each teacher in the department as a welcome back. It's included just a few commonly needed things - a pencil holder, pens, pencils, markers, post-its. This year, I decided to do something a little different as I know sometimes you just need a little extra to make it through the day. So I got a little bin and just filled it with various candies, and then a few pencils, sharpies, and post-it. I made a cute label to go on the top of each and then created a saying to go with each item. It's a small thing I can do to welcome them back, thank them, and wish them an awesome year! (and now that the year has started and I gave these out to my team, I can finally post this!)

Gift File

Classroom Decor

As the new school year gets ready to start, I've been working on cleaning up my classroom and reorganizing a few things. This summer I decided I needed to fix my pennants. As I was getting more (which I got two more this summer - University of Oregon and College of Idaho!) I realized I wasn't utilizing my wall space well enough. So I lined them up a little better and attached them to the wall that students would see immediately when they walked in. Having a lot of Seniors this year, I really wanted to highlight the college mentality. And I love that I am representing different colleges than what they may be familiar with.

When I first started at my current school (2011), I had created THINK posters. I really liked this saying and I wanted to remind my students to always think. This year I saw on Pinterest an addition with Social Media. I'm constantly reminding my students about this, so I decided to add this to my wall too.

Found on Pintrest

So here is how it now looks in my room:


Here is Social Media Images File if anyone would like to have them. I'm sure I will need to change them out in the future, but for now this seemed like a good collection of frequently used media.

The last set of pictures below are just additional signs I have in my room. As a math teacher, I remind students often about the "how" and "why" explanation to problems, not just "what did you get".  And the most common question - "when will I need this?" I saw this answer in a summer school classroom a few years ago. It summed up perfectly how I felt so I recreated it (file here). I don't think I've been asked the question since I put it up last year, but a new set of students will be walking in tomorrow morning, so we will see!

 

I'm still working on reorganizing some other things. As the year gets ready to start, I realize I've spent a lot of time making sure everyone else is ready and set, but I sort of forgot about myself...oh well! I'll figure it out as I go along.

Reconciling Accounts

We are offering Financial Algebra for the first time at our school this upcoming school year. Myself and my former student teacher (I say that because we work awesome together and we hired her last year!) will be teaching 2 sections each of the third-year elective math course. I'm both very excited and crazy nervous! When I taught Integrated Math 1 the past 2 years, we discuss simple and compound interest and I become SOOOO passionate about the topic. Last year we even discussed credit card statements and the "minimum" payment!!

As we started preparing things for this year, we decided to do Chapter 3, Banking Services, first. The first two sections are on Checking Accounts and Reconcile a Bank Statement. It got me thinking ... does anyone use a check register or reconcile their accounts anymore? My counterpart said she just looks at her account balance online. Although I'm about 5-6 years older than her, I kept a written check register for the longest time (probably stopped in 2005 - my husband still keeps receipts for me because I used to make him do it all the time!!). I've been using Quicken for almost 10 years to manage my checking and savings accounts. I enter every transaction and categorize every expense. Am I the only one???? In asking a few others, I feel like I am! So, I wonder at what generation did that switch occur?

We decided to introduce the idea of how to balance a checking account by seeing if the students could with little to no direction. We figured this generation isn't writing a ledger of transactions, but depending more and more on the information provided online by their bank. I also decided that I wanted to see what others did, so I'm having each student quickly interview 3 people (Survey document) as homework on the first day. I haven't yet decided if I want to do a Google Form yet for the data, but I think the results may create a great discussion in class.

Since we only have 3 days figured out of this course, I'm back to planning.  But, what are your thoughts on reconciling accounts?

I'm Back!!

After an almost two year hiatus (pregnancy and enjoying time with my wonderful daughter), I decided that I need to start blogging again. I'm hoping that I can post more often than my last go around and offer more insight and resources into my teaching.

As I've spent the summer preparing and planning for the upcoming school year, I felt like there were a lack of resources for the 3 classes I needed to prepare: Integrated Math 1, Financial Algebra, and Senior AVID Seminar. I thought if I was feeling this way, there had to be others out there? So, I'm hoping that by writing about my journey, it may stir additional conversations and offer others a place to gather some ideas. [DISCLAIMER: I am not an expert for these courses]

We are in our third year with Common Core Integrated Math. To be honest, we are really starting our 5th year since we are on a 4x4 schedule. The transition to Common Core and Integrated was tough, not for content but more due to parent and student resistance. I think it was more misunderstanding than anything. Seeing our students go through the 3 courses has been awesome - the level of math they are doing, the conversations they are having, the interest level! The past two years we were using the Mathematics Vision Project. In January, our three District high schools came together to discuss and choose one main resource that we were going to use moving forward (prior to this each school was using a different program). I highlight main resource because it was made clear that this would not be our curriculum; that our curriculum we would develop as we went and that we would have the ability to pull different resources together! Ultimately, we decided to go with CPM (College Preparatory Mathematics) as our main resource as we felt it would be more accessible to all students. While not ecstatic that we would have to change after all the time and effort my department had put in, I knew this decision would be for the best and I was still happy that I would be able to pull in my favorite MVP lessons. So I spent most of the Spring and Summer preparing for our upcoming school year. I've got 7 teachers teaching this course; 4 of them for the first time and 3 of those are brand new to our school (2 totally fresh teachers). It's going to be crazy this Fall. I'm excited at what resources we will be putting together and looking forward to the feedback our team has.

I spent a lot of the 2014-2015 school year working with another teacher in our District to get Financial Algebra as an approved course in our District. I'm a strong supporter of financial literacy in the classroom and wish more required it. At least this course would give a third year course option to our students and get them knowledgeable for the world they are about to enter. Since I was on Maternity Leave for 1/3 of last year, I decided to hold off on offering the course until this year. We got about 140 students signed up to take the class and will be offering 4 sections of it. I'm excited that I will have 2 of the sections and my former student teacher will have 2 of them. We have already spent several hours meeting and trying to figure out how we envision the class, what we want to cover, and how we can make it relevant and applicable to each student. More on this throughout the year!

Finally, I'll also be teaching Senior AVID Seminar. I taught Freshman AVID in the past for 2 years, so I'm excited and nervous about this switch to Seniors. Again, with our 4x4 schedule, curriculum gets crazy. I'm not sure how our school has managed this schedule (I know they have!) so I'm anxious about getting into figuring all that out. I'm also excited since my first set of freshman AVID kiddos are now seniors, so it'll be nice to see where they are now.

I'm planning on making an effort to blog at least once per week with my insights of these three classes. I'll post the resources I can too! I may write about a few other things too - as a BTSA support provider, department chair, sports enthusiast!