Visa USA, Future Business Leaders of America-PBL Announce
Winners of ‘Practical Money Skills for Life Educator Challenge’
Innovative High School Teachers Rewarded for Teaching the
Financial Facts of Life
San Francisco - June 7, 2004 - Visa USA
and the Future Business Leaders of America-Phi Beta Lambda, Inc.
(FBLA-PBL) announced the winners of the second annual Practical
Money Skills for Life Educator Challenge.
The
Educator Challenge recognizes high school educators for creatively
and effectively teaching financial literacy lessons, and whose
classes demonstrated a mastery of personal finance knowledge.
These educators were judged by a panel of educators and experts
that included Money magazine columnist and Today Show contributor
Jean Chatzky and Nancy Register, Assistant Director of the Consumer
Federation of America.
"These extraordinary educators deserve all
the credit for helping students learn better money management
skills," said Rosetta Jones, director, Visa USA. "The
educators’ effective teaching strategies are models for
success, and can be downloaded at www.practicalmoneyskills.com."
"This annual competition serves as a vehicle
to showcase some of the best practices of teaching money skills
across the nation," said Educator Challenge judge Joseph
Jones, III, Assistant Superintendent for Academics at the North
Burlington County Regional School District of New Jersey. "The
value of this program becomes readily apparent when reading about
the classroom activities and student responses to these experiences."
The winners of the 2004 Educator Challenge include:
Grand Prize Educator: Fern Bash, Cathedral
City High School, Cathedral City, CA
First Prize Educators: Sharon Hathaway,
Leavitt Area High School, Turner, ME
Sara Henke, Tri-County R-VII High School, Jamesport, MO
Honorable Mentions:
- Cynthia J. Soraoka, Deer Valley High School, Antioch, CA
- Marcia Day, Athens High School, Athens, AL
- Jennifer Curry, Pottsville High School, Pottsville, AR Kimberly
Nichols, Rome High School, Rome, GA
- Thomas Dzicek, Capt. Nathan Hale School, Coventry, CT
- Karen Simmons, Ocean Lakes High School, Virginia Beach,
VA
- Melinda Smith, Cedar Ridge High School, Hillsborough, NC
- Spencer Morrison, Beaver Area Middle/High School, Beaver,
PA
- Carrie Medlock, Legacy High School, Broomfield, CO
- W. Lynne Mezias Fedor, Guilford County High Schools, McLeansville,
NC
- Lalita Samrai, Heritage High School, Newport News, VA
"This program challenges both students and
teachers, and delivers the best in curriculum development for
this critical need facing students. Those educators involved are
to be commended for their commitment to this necessary subject,"
explained FBLA-PBL president and CEO Jean M. Buckley.
"Practical Money Skills for Life provides teachers
with meaningful curriculum choices that can easily be incorporated
into existing classroom plans," added Jones.
Teachers registered for the Practical Money Skills
for Life Educator Challenge on www.practicalmoneyskills.com
- a free online financial education resource for students, teachers,
parents, and consumers of all ages. Classes were judged on the
following criteria that evaluated both the teaching skills employed
and the students’ results:
- Improvement of financial literacy test results - Improvement
was measured by the difference in class average between pre-test
and post-test scores. Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial
Literacy developed the recommended test for this contest.
- Creative teaching strategies - The creative component reflected
the methods used by the educator to incorporate personal finance
material into his/her lesson plans.
- Student learning - This portion of the entry contained a
demonstration of changes in student understanding towards
how they managed their money.
About Practical Money Skills for Life
The Practical Money Skills for Life curriculum is teacher tested
and teacher approved. At the 2001 National Education Association
Expo, the program was put before teachers to evaluate and grade.
Nearly 100 percent of teachers who reviewed the site said they
approve of the Practical Money Skills for Life program; 98 percent
said they would recommend the site to other educators, and 94
percent gave the program a "B" or better. The curriculum
currently reaches 2.5 million teachers, 37 million students, and
100,000 schools. Additionally, this program won the National Association
of Consumer Agency Administrators 2002 Achievement in Consumer
Education Award (ACE) for the best innovative program for the
private sector and named an "Honorable Mention" by the
Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy’s 2002
Soaring$tar Award.
About Visa
Visa is the world’s leading payment brand and largest consumer
payment system, enabling banks to provide their consumer and merchant
customers with a wide variety of payment alternatives. Nearly
21,000 financial institutions worldwide rely on Visa’s processing
system, VisaNet, to facilitate $2.5 trillion in annual transaction
volume with virtually 100-percent reliability. Consumers in more
than 150 countries carry more than 1 billion Visa-branded cards,
accepted at millions of locations worldwide. Within the United
States, nearly 14,000 financial institutions issue 429 million
Visa cards, accounting for more than $1.1 trillion in annual transaction
volume. Visa offers a trusted, reliable and convenient way to
access and mobilize financial resources - anytime, anywhere, any
way. For more information about Visa, please visit www.visa.com.
About FBLA-PBL
Future Business Leaders of America-Phi Beta Lambda, Inc. is a
nonprofit 501(c)3 student business organization with a quarter
million members in 12,000 chartered high school and college chapters
worldwide. Its mission is to bring business and education together
in a positive working relationship through innovative leadership
and career development programs. FBLA-PBL was developed as an
enhancement to the traditional classroom educational model. Its
vision is to be the premier career student association helping
an ever-increasing number of business students reach their full
potential. Participation in FBLA-PBL can have a direct impact
on the course and success of a young person’s career. Some
four million plus students have learned, through active membership
in FBLA-PBL, about the world of business and what is expected
of them in the workplace and as entrepreneurs.
For more information, please visit www.practicalmoneyskills.com,
or contact Kristy Thomas at kthomas@crc4pr.com,
(703) 683-5004 ext. 136, or Maria Hatzikonstantinou at maria@crc4pr.com,
(703) 683-5004 x.131.
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