Empower a Teacher, Reach a Generation
FEE’s Educator Engagement program and its impact in the classroom.
As a former classroom teacher, I’ve seen firsthand how understanding personal finance and free enterprise can change the trajectory of a young person’s life. My students still reach out to me years later, saying they’ve opened a Roth IRA, bought their first property, or chosen a career they’re passionate about rather than simply chasing a paycheck, all because they learned personal finance and the economic way of thinking. That is the reach one teacher can have. Now multiply it by the more than 10,000 educators who have signed up for FEE’s free curriculum and classroom resources, each reaching hundreds of students every year and thousands over the course of a career. That is the scale at which FEE’s Educator Engagement team works. We have the opportunity to reach generations of young people with ideas that shape how they understand the economy, their opportunities, and the ideas that lead to prosperity.
Each year, our team trains thousands of teachers virtually and in person, equipping them with engaging, classroom-ready tools they can immediately put to use with their students. Through award-winning curriculum series like Economic Marvels, we help educators bring sound economic thinking, financial literacy, and the principles that build a prosperous society to life in their classrooms.
We want teachers and students to understand the foundations of the free enterprise system and how to participate and thrive in it, and that starts with the economic way of thinking. Every choice involves a trade-off, incentives shape behavior, prices carry information, and voluntary exchange creates value. Property rights, the rule of law, entrepreneurship, and open markets provide the bedrock of a free-market economy and have produced extraordinary increases in living standards around the world.
One way we make economics come alive is by focusing on businesses students know and relate to. That’s the idea behind the Economic Marvels series, our most popular classroom resource, where students explore the economics and entrepreneurial stories behind the products, companies, and services they use every day. They start to recognize that the products surrounding them, items that were once luxuries and now have become everyday necessities, are not accidents. They are the result of entrepreneurs identifying problems, taking risks, and creating value in a market economy. Another one of our resources, Think Like an Economist, takes an article from FEE.org and provides in-depth analysis and discussion prompts. This helps teachers make current events and economic themes engaging and relevant to their students.
Sound economic thinking also gives students a framework for evaluating ideas that may sound appealing but can produce harmful unintended consequences. When students encounter proposals such as rent control, price controls, or government-run grocery stores, they should be empowered with the knowledge to ask critical questions about these ideas. What are the incentives? What are the trade-offs? Who ultimately bears the cost? Our lessons bring these questions to life through iconic stories, like the moment Soviet leader Boris Yeltsin, on an unscheduled stop during a 1989 Texas trip, stood awestruck in the aisles of a Houston-area supermarket. The experience reportedly shook his faith in communism and offers students a powerful reminder of both the abundance we often take for granted in a market economy and the folly of central planning.
Students should also wrestle with bigger questions. Why have people risked their lives to leave places like Cuba for the United States? Why do some societies create extraordinary opportunities for ordinary people while others struggle to do so? Our lesson plans teach students how to look beyond intentions and examine incentives, trade-offs, and consequences. These habits help students understand how property rights, the rule of law, market prices, and voluntary exchange contribute to human flourishing.
Financial literacy is another essential part of our mission. FEE’s Financial Freedom curriculum gives teachers resources for helping students learn to save and invest their money, build credit, budget, and understand the magic of compounding interest. We want students to understand how free enterprise works and how they can participate in it. By saving, investing, and learning how to own assets, they can build financial freedom and benefit from the growth and prosperity the market economy creates.
Delivering financial literacy starts with well-prepared teachers, which is why we also offer our Financial Intelligence Teacher (FIT) certification, the nation’s only free personal finance certification aligned to the latest national standards. FIT has become a requirement for teachers in programs like Financial Skills for Smart Living at the University of Northern Iowa, which helps Iowa high school students earn college credit in personal finance.
We aren’t just distributing lesson plans. Our professional development brings these ideas directly to teachers. Because our educator outreach team is made up of former teachers, we know educators don’t need another day of professional development that fails to engage or inspire. Instead, we create interactive sessions built around timely topics, often alongside outstanding faculty partners like Dr. Matthew Rousu, Dean of the Sigmund Weis School of Business at Susquehanna University.
This summer alone, that meant presenting our America’s 250th anniversary curriculum to teachers at a Washington, DC, summit, showing how the Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, both published in 1776, changed the world with powerful ideas about liberty, property rights, and economic freedom. We showed teachers how those principles, combined with specialization, exchange, and innovation, helped lay the foundation for remarkable economic growth and prosperity. It also meant a full day of training in Minnesota focused on financial literacy, investing, and giving teachers practical tools to help students build real-world money skills, and a session in San Diego where teachers explored tariffs, Adam Smith, and the economics of the World Cup.
This is especially valuable because many teachers assigned to teach economics never studied economics in college. We help them strengthen their own understanding while inspiring them to bring these ideas to their students in creative, engaging ways.
Teachers consistently tell us that these sessions make a difference. As a teacher from Minnesota put it: “This is the best PD I’ve been to in my 10-year career. I can’t wait to use FEE’s lessons with my students!”
The top priority of our Educator Engagement team is investing in educators who can reach the next generation with the ideas that make freedom and prosperity possible. We want students to believe in a better future: that they can build something, become owners, invest, pursue meaningful careers, start businesses, and benefit from a growing economy. By helping teachers bring these ideas to life, FEE is empowering young people to pursue their dreams, thrive in a free society, and understand why the freedom that makes those opportunities possible is worth preserving.
If you have any thoughts or comments about our work, or would like to reach out about an educational training, please feel free to contact the FEE Educator Engagement Team at learning@fee.org. We would love to hear from you. Educators can explore our full library of free classroom resources at teachers.fee.org.
-James Redelsheimer
James Redelsheimer is an Education Manager at FEE with over 20 years of experience as an AP Economics and personal finance instructor, and co-author of Barron’s AP Economics. In recognition of his contributions to economic and personal finance education, he has received awards such as the Thrivent Personal Finance Educator of the Year Award from the Minnesota Council on Economic Education.
This piece was reproduced with the permission of FEE. Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.
