Garrison School for the Arts is a choice program school, formerly known as a magnet school,

located in downtown Savannah, Georgia. The school serves students in Pre-Kindergarten

through 8th grade, and has admissions criteria that must be met in order for students to be
placed in a lottery for available seats. Admission to the middle grades in particular is highly
competitive; students must first meet academic criteria slightly above grade level to qualify for
an audition in one of seven majors. The seven majors are: band, chorus, dance, orchestra,
piano, theater, and visual art. Once students who are academically qualified are auditioned,
they are placed in a rank order by audition scores. Available seats are filled according to the
score rank order, highest scores first.

In the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, middle school students have one marking period of
instruction in Business and Computer Science. The marking period lasts nine weeks, and there
are twelve standards (with supporting substandards) for each grade level. Students in 6th
grade take BCS 1, students in 7th grade take BCS 2, and students in 8th grade take BCS 3.
There are some standards that are common throughout the three courses. For example, in
each of the three years, students cover word processing software, presentation software,
spreadsheet software, internet safety, and keyboarding. However, when a student enters BCS
3 in 8th grade, there is a marked shift to more economic-based standards. One of the
standards covered is personal finance.

Typically, I teach elementary aged students and middle school aged students. However, at the
beginning of this past summer, I taught employability skills and financial literacy to high school
juniors, seniors, and recent graduates. These students were part of a program called Summer
500, in which our city government secures jobs for high school students and provides them with
pre-employment training. As I began to cover the personal finance curriculum with the high
school students, I quickly realized that they were lacking even the most basic understanding of
necessary financial skills. Further, I realized that 11th grade is far too late to begin teaching our
students to be financially literate. Finally, I realized that a learning problem exists in my 8th
grade class: Students need to receive intensive instruction in personal finance, when in the
past, we’d spent very little time on this topic.

In the context of my school, Garrison School for the Arts, financial literacy is critical, particularly
as it relates to college. As I mentioned, all the students in our middle school have had to pass a
rigorous academic review to qualify to audition for admission. The overwhelming majority of our
students, based on their past academic achievements, are likely college bound. However, not
all of our students come from a socioeconomic background in which their parents will be able to
afford to fund their college education. Our students must learn now, before high school begins,
how to financially plan for college and how their academic record can translate to scholarships.
It is essential that they know how to manage money they earn now, and how the financial
choices they make can set the course for their future.

With my new knowledge about the need for earlier intervention with personal finance instruction,
I sought the advice and opinion of my principal. I explained that most of our students, by the
time they finished BCS 2, had mastered the standards of BCS 3 in the areas of documents,
spreadsheets, presentations, internet safety, and keyboarding. I described what I’d learned
from teaching the high schoolers over the summer, and asked for his support in focusing on
personal finance heavily during BCS 3 this year. He wholeheartedly agreed that our students
could benefit from more in depth financial instruction.

On the second day of school this year, I gave my 27 BCS 3 students a personal finance pretest.
The scores ranged from 12 percent to 64 percent. The data from this pretest affirmed what I
suspected: our 8th grade students were in need of financial literacy instruction, and they
needed it before they began their high school careers.

My learning goal is to have each of my 8th grade students with an increased level of proficiency
in personal finance, and score at least a 75% on the end of quarter post test. I will use my
instruction to accomplish these goals.