Professional Development for Financial Literacy

Build on Your Personal Financial Literacy & Economic Knowledge

This PD course assumes you are living independently, paying bills, managing your finances and have experienced real life. Every teacher has financial experience. But do you have written goals, a written financial plan for your future and intend to be financial independent by age 55?

If this is what you want, you will find that the instructional material from D&A will enhance your knowledge. The focus is not on making you an expert if personal finance and economics. We believe if the courses can teach your high school students about finances, careers, and post-secondary education funding and selection, you can easily learn the materials.

The focus of this PD is on helping you achieve your goals and making you a better teacher through PFL materials. Instead of you spending time building your own course, you will gain insight into the materials by taking the course as though you were a student. You will set long-term goals, develop a ten-year plan and then modify your plan as you acquire knowledge. At the ned of the course, you should have a solid and realistic plan for your career and becoming financially secure and independent.

So what will make you a better teacher? In this PD course, you will learn how to teach your students how to critically think, problem-solve, work in teams, communicate and accept responsibility for their future. Without these skills, they will be hopelessly lost in a future of technology and the age of artificial intelligence, as you would be if your didn’t know how to think.

Using Bloom’s Taxonomy, T-TESS Rubrics and materials from the Center and Foundation for Critical Thinking, we have integrated this higher level of instructional methodology into the course.

Why? Research demonstrates that any PFL course based on memorization or telling students what to do, will fail to deliver any long term positive outcomes. Students need understanding to retain financial concepts. To understand, they must think about and apply PFL to their lives. This is why we time travel to the future and begin the course with students setting ten year goals and plans. We know that their initial attempt will not reflect reality. But this is a creative, thinking beginning for them to understand that they are responsible for and in control of their future.

What Can You Expect?

• D&A Response Team and developers of the Real Life courses are your coaches, mentors, guides and personal consultants. They have received awards for outcome based programs.
• Although the course is self-paced, you can participate in team discussions, where you work with other educators on implementation of the material.
• You are expected to complete assignments and send them to D&A Response Team for feedback. Since you are responsible for your professional development, if you do not complete assignments or fail to work in teams, it is your decision. There are no refunds in real-life.
• The PD course runs throughout the school year, starting August 1st.
• You report your time and upon successful completion of the course, you will receive a certificate of completion.
• Although not required, D&A would like feedback from you on your district teacher evaluations, career decisions and student classroom performance and outcomes.