INDIANAPOLIS, Aug. 01, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rising gas prices, soaring inflation, and the sky-high cost of attending college are three economic challenges impacting high schoolers, and a recent survey conducted by Junior Achievement and Citizens Financial Group shows that majority of them feel unprepared to deal with these financial issues. Poptential™ offers a free curriculum designed to make learning about personal finance engaging and fun for students, so they are confident in their ability to make choices in any economic environment. Click to tweet.
According to the survey, 54% of teens reported they don’t feel ready to take on future financial challenges, and 41% said they have had no financial literacy classes at school.
“The high demand for laborers means that teens are earning quite a bit more working summer jobs than in previous years, but they are seeing their buying power plummet due to high gas prices and inflation,” said Fred Fransen, president of Certell, Inc., the company that creates Poptential’s family of free social studies course packages. “This economic environment provides a great opportunity to educate teens about personal finance so they can make confident decisions about their finances today and for the rest of their lives.”
Poptential’s free Practical Personal Finance curriculum, part of its Common Sense Economics eBook, includes everything instructors need to teach digitally accessible in one place, including lessons, ebooks, bell ringers, quizzes, and tests, as well as pop culture media to make lessons interesting and relatable to students. Curriculum packages are standards-based and developed by teachers.
Poptential Practical Personal Finance uses digital storytelling to engage and illustrate critical financial literacy skills. For example:
- Healthy debt habits — A majority of Americans spend more than they earn every year. Thinking about how to better align consumption, borrowing, and saving decisions will lead to financial success. This creative video in Module 12 Element 4.3 brings to life how to be “money smart.”
- Cutting costs — Illustrating how fancy coffee drinks eat away at a budget, this National Espresso Day Bell Ringer in Module 13 offers tips, questions, and a supportive video from Time Magazine for students to consider how to cut costs on consumer goods.
- Spending within your means — When students see their friends, family members, and neighbors spending, it’s tempting to go beyond their means to compete with the lifestyle of others. In Module 13, comedian Kevin Hart shares this funny take on the problem of “keeping up with the Joneses” and offers how he stays in his financial lane.
- Wise financing — Borrowing can be bad when it’s done to buy things that are of little value, such as using student loans to finance a Spring break trip. This digital storytelling clip in Module 13 Element 4.4 offers real-life examples to enhance future earnings power and make saving a habit.
- Mind over money – The ability to control spending by avoiding credit-card debt and cultivating smart purchasing habits can lead to greater savings. In Module 13 Element 4.5, Financial Editor of NBC’s TODAY Show Jean Chatzky outlines her tips for how to think clearly about spending.
Students are hungry for information about how to manage their finances and more states are making Financial Literacy a graduation requirement, according to Fransen.
Poptential course packages in American History, World History, U.S. Government/Civics, and Economics, are available free at www.poptential.org.
About Certell, Inc.
Certell is a 501(c)3 nonprofit whose mission is to foster a generation of independent thinkers. More than 30,000 teachers from throughout the United States have signed up to use Certell’s Poptential™ family of free social studies courses, and thousands more students are reached through Certell’s college-level courses in law and economics, and SensibleSchool™ instruction for home-schoolers, employees, and inmates. Certell course packages have won a number of awards, including EdTech Digest Awards for Curriculum and Instruction Solution, Tech&Learning Best Tool for Back to School, Tech Edvocate Awards, Bronze Award of Excellence from the National Association of Economics Educators, and Civvys Awards. More information is available at poptential.org or on Twitter @CertellOrg.
For information contact:
Mara Conklin, 847-340-6823
mconklin@teamclarus.com
Kathy Zoeller, (312) 485-2422
kathy@mattsonpr.com
