54-Financial Education Public-Private Partnership (FEPPP) with Executive Director Tracy Godat

•   A legislatively created program that back in around 2004, some legislators got together and said, We need to make sure that we are forcing the state superintendent to make financial literacy a priority because it's one of those small content areas that often don't get attention, like some of the higher stakes content areas like Mathematics and Science and ELA and so on. And so they created this based on the governor at the time, they had a task force that was going on, and it was a financial literacy taskforce, and combined with that, they created this public-private partnership that is very well-balanced with legislators and educators and our private sector partners as well. (2:05)

•   These professional development opportunities, the one you attended was what we consider our master's training, so we started out doing a few days of what we call the novice training, and what we realized really fast, several years ago, we've been doing these for about 11 years, and we realize teachers that are assigned some of these personal finance courses or courses that include financial literacy did not have the background or the training for it, so we actually have kind of a two-pronged approach where we bring in content experts and deliver content, increase teacher content knowledge. (6:10)

•   And if I can say that what we've learned from the pandemic, if we want to go there and talk about the pandemic, if you can imagine when we all first got sent home and the whole world shut down. I was in a position of feeling like, How can I stay relevant for this financial education conversation because one, on one side, we've got teachers that were trying to figure out this new platform of instruction, and they're stressed and parents are stressed, and they're at home, and they're trying to work and trying to do school, so how can I fight to say, This is still important, because we know now that it was even more important because a lot of people weren't financially prepared for that emergency . (10:47)

•  I want to make sure that your listeners understand what the benefit of going to a platform like that is. The fact that these are all open licensed resources, meaning that teachers don't have to pay for them if there's any copyrights, it's very clear on there, the attributions are clear. And the idea is so they get free resources to take them and use them however they need. And that is what we, as educators need. We need to have these resources that were not bound to by a contract or having to follow in such a way. We can have this as an extension, the opportunity for a student, for student learning and engagement, or we can follow the curriculum as is. (17:16)

•   And even just something simple like with that new partnership made us realize how we had them at one of our meetings and we had a presentation and we just did the close caption on a YouTube video. Well, we hadn't gone back and made sure that the words that it designated were the words being said and it was confusing this community of hearing people that are deaf and hearing loss, and I learned from that, but that's harder for them, because then they can't read the lips and then the words aren't matching, and we really learned about that, that we need to make sure we've got close caption, and we need to make sure it's right. (20:40)

• We put one up that we use in our trainings, and we have some of them that are, not just Washington State. We use the financial fitness for life, it's not free, but we have found that after even 10 years, teachers are still using the same curriculum that they've had. Why is that? It's just that good. Really? It's that well received, and you probably got a little taste of it during the master's training you were at,, if you've got the little thumb drive that we hand it out. (24:30)

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CONTENT DISCUSSED…

• FCS Podcast: https://fcspodcast.com
• FCS Tips: https://www.fcstips.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ConnectFCSed
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Scully6Files
• Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/connectfcsed
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/connectfcsed

LEARN MORE ABOUT TRACY…

• Website: FEPPP.org
• Follow us on Twitter: FEPPP@WA_FEPPP
• Address: 600 Washington St SE | Olympia, WA 98504-720
• Phone - Office: 360-725-6260

https://www.k12.wa.us/sites/default/files/public/feppp/pdf/Financial_Education_materials2020.pdf

https://www.oercommons.org/hubs/1/browse?f.search=financial+education&__hub_id=1

WHEN DOES IT AIR…
April 14, 2021