We're Banking On It!

By now, you've probably heard the buzz about our classroom economy. It's certainly been one of the most highlighted learning experiences since the start of the new school year. 

In a nutshell, our classroom economy provides an opportunity for students to learn the principles of economics and valuable financial life skills in an experiential way while promoting positive behavior. It not only teaches financial literacy and discipline but also the rewards that go with it. Students were very excited to learn that we'll be using it in The Hive for the entire school year. Students are:

• Taking part in a simulation of real-world economic activity
• Learning the responsibility that comes with completing a job and the value of earning a paycheck 
• Learning how to budget their spending and make scheduled payments (i.e. weekly rent and utilities) as well as unexpected expenses (i.e. fines)
• Understanding the importance of saving money to reach their goals
• Discovering that every decision has an opportunity cost
• Learning that the cost of goods and services fluctuates based on supply and demand and the rate of inflation
• Preparing to be responsible citizens in our nation’s economic system

This week's guest bloggers reflect on the first two weeks of engagement in our classroom economy. Enjoy.

One of the benefits of a classroom economy is that our teachers follow the real world costs of rent and salaries. Another reason is that it keeps our class organized because the teachers don't have to do all the work of keeping our classroom neat and clean. One final reason is that the real-world costs of things are going up and down all the time and our classroom economy is preparing us for that.    - @TheScienceGeek

Our classroom economy will help us be better mathematicians because we have an actual bank in our system. The bankers use their knowledge of addition and subtraction with dollars, and they pay salaries and collect rent each week. Even if you're not the banker one week, you still have to use addition and subtraction skills to keep track of your money and manage it so that you can use your money to buy rewards.   - @Daisy

There are many benefits of having a classroom economy. One is that you can get awesome rewards for going above and beyond expected behaviors (even though the rewards are very pricey). I love how we pay rent and collect salaries each week and when we have to pay a fine, we don't get called out. I absolutely love this - it is such a creative activity.   - @magician-of-icecream 

I am learning that an economy is basically a system of money. Once the government prints the money, it goes to the banks and then gets borrowed by people to pay for things from other businesses. The businesses can then use that money to buy things and pay their workers. The workers use the money to buy stuff from other businesses and it keeps repeating.   - @RockHam

One of the benefits of having a classroom economy is that you get to experience how real life works. For example, we have to pay rent and get a job that pays us a salary each week. Some jobs are easy and some are trickier than others and each job pays a salary depending on the type of job.   - @softballgirl123

I am learning that an economy is like a chain of money. It all depends on what you spend and save. An economy is also kind of like an environment mainly because many people are part of an economy and use it together.    -@booksrule

One of the benefits of having a classroom economy is that you learn how to figure out how to manage your money to spend on things you want (classroom rewards) and things you need (rent).   - @soccerqueen6

Having a classroom economy is helpful because you will need to know how to spend your money and save it later in life. Let's say you work at Chipotlé and you're saving up for a new car. You have to learn how to save up and not get tempted by certain other offers. Once you get enough money, you should get a little more so that you can pay monthly for the car. You also have to do the same thing for a house and any other expensive items. To sum it up, our classroom economy is good because it gives us practice in managing money.   - @RV17

One of the benefits of our classroom economy is that if you do your job each week, you get paid a salary. Also, you have to manage your money so that you don't get fined or can pay your weekly rent. You also learn how to save up money for rewards like Pajama Day, reserving the couch for a day, etc. These are just some of the benefits.   - @Burt

One of the benefits of having a classroom economy is that you will have skills for when you get a job. It helps us learn how to manage money and to get used to doing different kinds of jobs. It's also good for teachers because we help them get the classroom organized and ready for the next day.    - @ArcticFox

There are lots of benefits of having a classroom economy. First of all, we learn responsibility because we have to keep track of our money and take care of it. We also earn the trust of our classmates by paying our rent on time, paying fines if we owe them, and collecting our salaries for doing our jobs.   - @writingmachine

I think our classroom economy will help us be better mathematicians for a couple of reasons. My first reason is that in the real world, you always need to know how much money you have and you have to count it. Another reason is if you're a banker, landlord, or store manager, you'll have to count money to make sure you are either paying people the right amount of money or collecting the right amount of money.  - @Gamerhead41

One benefit of a classroom economy is that it teaches us to problem-solve and to spend our money wisely. Also, it helps us understand math better because we have to count how much money we have in our wallets and how to add or subtract money for fines or bonus cash rewards. This is helping us learn how a real economy works.    - @Puppyonline

The classroom economy is teaching us how to manage our own money. It's also teaching us to become more independent and to work as a team to ensure we have a clean and organized learning environment.    - @HarryPotter

One benefit of a classroom economy is that you learn how to spend your money. For example, you must know how to manage your money because you have to have enough left over to pay rent at the end of every week. Another reason is that it helps us grow in our independence. For example, you have to remember to do your job yourself otherwise you won't get paid.    - @softballpiggy

I think our classroom economy is going to be a helpful experience because our classroom works like the real world and because it encourages everyone to be more controlled and well-behaved. We get paid a salary each week, we have to pay rent, sometimes we have to pay fines, and sometimes we can earn bonus cash by going above and beyond the expectations. Our rent and the cost of rewards can go up or down depending on the rate of inflation, just like the real economy.   - @Potato

The Value of Listening

Listening is a fundamental aspect of developing strong interpersonal relationships as well as a meaningful understanding of the world around us. We often find ourselves distracted or overwhelmed which can impede our ability to truly listen and understand one another and purposefully process the experience of learning and life. 

As we work toward developing the key skills, competencies, and dispositions that learners need in order to achieve success in school and in life, we took some time this week to focus on the value of active listening. To promote the value of this important skill, students were partnered with a classmate and engaged in a dialogical interview. Dialogical interviews focus less on making the interviewer's opinions and ideas heard and more on the thoughts and ideas of the interviewee. The purpose of this exercise was to offer students a meaningful opportunity to practice and develop their active listening skills, as well as to continue their important work in developing trusting and caring relationships within our classroom community and bolstering a mutual understanding of one another. Though at times the experience proved to be a challenge for some of our learners, they were eventually able to successfully redirect their thinking and engage in meaningful moments of understanding and empathy. 

Listening exercises like this will be an essential part of the work we're engaging in as they help to develop skills that promote empathy, and effective collaboration, that allow learners to absorb knowledge, be curious, and develop a deep understanding of what they are learning about and experiencing, foster critical thinking, better communicate their ideas, support meaningful discussions about text, and allow learners to see and experience the value of diverse perspectives and creative approaches to problem-solving.

This week's guest bloggers reflect on their listening experience. Enjoy.

Listening is acknowledging the speaker and digging deep to learn more about someone or something.   - @MagicianofIceCream

I learned that listening is always important no matter what you are doing. It's especially important if you are working together with someone. You can hear someone talking and think you're listening, but what about active listening. Active listening is when you hear something and you actually pay attention to it and process it through your brain. We had to use a lot of active listening for our dialogical interviews because it would have been easy to get distracted. All in all, it's very important to listen in life no matter what the situation is.    - @writingmachine

Listening is necessary for solving problems or designing prototypes for projects because you have to listen to what the other person or customer wants or needs to be done in order to create something that meets their needs.     - @seafoam-da-seawing

Listening is an act of kindness because listening makes the other person feel good. It also helps you to see other points of view.    - @potatomonitor

Listening is an important skill for me to develop because I need to listen to people so that I can get to know them better. It's important to pay attention, sit still and not get distracted.    - @Burt

Listening is highly important because no matter what job you have, you will have to listen to others. For example, if you are a business owner and are trying to design a new product, you will need to learn about your customer's needs so that you will understand how to design the product so that it is actually useful to your customer.     - @HarryPotter

I learned that listening is important because it feels nice when you are listened to. It is also important because in life, you are going to need to listen carefully in order to do your job - whether you are a hairstylist, an engineer, or party planner - you have to know how to actively listen.   - @sunflower 

Welcome to a New School Year!

Students are settling in quite nicely and are already experiencing that feeling of being part of a strong and special community. Those first-day jitters are evolving into smiles, laughter, and a sense of comfort and belonging.

We've carefully and deliberately spent our first days of school not just establishing routines and expectations, but more importantly, creating a classroom that is built on community; where students recognize and celebrate shared goals and experiences, are learning to trust one another, feel empowered to contribute, and who feel understood, valued and capable. Those important traits will be nurtured all year long as they provide an essential foundation for developing teamwork, cooperation, communication, flexibility, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.

We asked students to reflect on their experiences over the last several days and write about which ones they found most meaningful, which skills they nurtured in the process, and why and how those skills are important. Here are a handful of reflections from this week's guest bloggers. Enjoy.

My best learning experience so far has been the Cards & Castles challenges because they helped teach me how to deal with failure. Some important skills that I needed to use in order to complete this activity were perseverance (never giving up!) because you had to keep trying even when the castles collapsed. Also, we needed to be flexible in our thinking because there were some really tough times we went through and we had to be able to change the way we were thinking. In the real world, we'll have to find ways to engineer problems in many, many different ways. Experiences like Cards & Castles taught us how to work together to solve problems.   -@gamerhead41 

My best learning experience so far has been creating our Habits of Mind skits. I liked that we got to choose whether to present a skit or create a model. Some important skills that I needed to use in order to complete this activity were creativity to come up with an interesting idea for our skit; determination to keep going when things didn't work out the first time, and patience because I had to be patient when working with members of my group. Learning to work with others is pretty likely to happen a lot (in school and in your future job).    -@WritingMachine

My best learning experience this week was the Cards & Castles challenge. Some important skills that I needed to use in order to complete this activity were perseverance because we needed to keep trying no matter how hard it was to make our towers; creativity and teamwork because the challenges were really hard and we had to work together to keep creating structures that were different than the others. Practicing and developing these skills is important because in the real world and in our future jobs, we will have to work together and communicate in different ways with other people.    - @thesciencegeek     

My best learning experience so far has been the dialogical interviews. Getting to know each other, especially my partner, was helpful (and funny). Some important learning skills that I needed to use in order to complete this activity were listening closely to learn as much as I could about my partner and collecting data; and patience while I would wait for my partner to finish speaking. This experience was helpful because in the real world, we will need to collect data and actively listen to others.   - @seafoam-da-seawing