Kimra Balliet teaches a broad range of subjects as a CTE teacher at Cottonwood, a K-12 homeschool charter. She came into teaching after a varied business career, and is credentialed in six industry sectors. She learned of NGPF in August of last year, checked out the website, is a regular visitor to the FinLit Fanatics Facebook page, and has since completed six certification courses, earning Distinguished Educator status!

Kimra incorporated material from the cert courses into the five CTE classes she teaches as soon as she was introduced to it in a course. Kimra has become quite adept at adjusting NGPF activities to fit her remote teaching model. This semester she added a Personal Finance pilot class to her offerings, and she just found out she is going to be teaching a year-long class next year!  Read on to find out more about what drives Kimra, what she teaches, and how she and her students get so much from NGPF.

Where/how were you first exposed to personal finance lessons in your life?

I think I just got out into the world and learned as I went and always thought…..shouldn’t I have been taught all this in school? I was one of those kids that was bombarded with credit card offers as a teen prior to the CARD act. I think my first exposure to financial education was when I worked for a psychologist that gave seminars about people’s relationships with money, but I was still young and thought that was more for older people. 

When I was growing up, money was something that was NOT discussed. It was considered rude. My family was not very good at managing money. It was often paycheck to paycheck and they didn’t take care of making sure we had basic things like health insurance. I think, because of this, I made huge mistakes in my early adult years and later had major catastrophes that required digging out of very deep holes including bankruptcy, public assistance, and homelessness because I had continued with the habit of spending what you make and had a scarcity mentality. The problem with this is that the minute a major catastrophe hits, it will take you under. 

While experience is often the best teacher in life, learning financial education the hard way can be extremely costly for many years. I think this is an area where it is so important for students to be given solid tools to be able to make informed decisions that can impact their life. 

What makes you so passionate about financial education?

I think all the things that I have gone through in life have made me very passionate about financial education. I firmly believe that if I had been taught financial education early in life things would have been very different. Not only may I not have ended up in really tough financial situations, it probably would have taken me much less time to turn it all around. My children have been taught about finances from a very young age and they are so much more responsible financially than I was. 

Do you ever share personal finance anecdotes from your own experience with your students?  

I do share my experiences with my students. In all my classes I challenge them to look at things they think, do, and believe and why they think, do, and believe these things. I tell them that while I was able to become aware of why I thought, did, and believed the things I did, I didn’t know there were other ways. So, we focus on tools that can help them to do things differently. We talk about the 7 habits of highly effective people, SMART goals, and various other topics that give them helpful tools that support them in not just being able to see things from different perspectives but also specific, practical ways to do things. 

Please describe your school for us.

I work for a Title 1, K-12 public charter school that is a home study model. We also have a very small Montessori-based onsite high school. We are based in El Dorado Hills, California, and serve students from all the touching counties. We have 2800 students currently with 611 high school students. We are a parent-choice school which means together with their teachers, parents are able to choose curricula, classes, vendor services, etc for their students. 

Kimra explained that this home study charter is a very popular model in California.

What classes do you teach, and what age are your students?

We just started our CTE program this year for 9th - 12th graders. My program is a 1-year, 20-credit CTE program. I offer 5 Industry Sectors with 5 Pathways in total. All of my students meet together in the zoom classes twice a week. In our zoom classes, I cover the Anchor Standards that are a part of all Industry Sectors. The rest of the week they work asynchronously on their Pathways. The courses are highly individualized and project-based. We cover a lot of material, and my students work really hard and do some amazing work!

The courses I currently teach are:

Agriscience

Managing Business

Family & Human Services

Health Care Administrative Services

Hospitality, Tourism & Recreation 

I’m also piloting a Personal Finance class with a few students asynchronously this semester primarily using NGPF materials. My hope is to offer a synchronous and asynchronous Personal Finance class next year. 

Kimra said her students enjoy their zoom classes and also take part in zoom office hours.  Even if they have no questions, they like to “hang out” their and do their work with their classmates.

What are your students' favorite classroom activities?  What is yours?

My students really like the NearPod lessons. 

Recently, I took a MOVE activity from NGPF and asked them questions. I did this for an in-person event we had for students. I got creative and brought it to my zoom classes too. On the Jamboard they put their names on “stickies” and moved them towards the 4 areas of strongly agree, mildly agree, strongly disagree, and mildly disagree. They loved it, and it was a lot of fun watching the stickies move around on the screen!

One of their favorite lessons was Your Money and Social Media. They were really surprised to see how much they are influenced by social media. 

I like when I give them a list of the Questions of the Day and they pick different numbers of questions to look at and discuss. They have fun with that too. 

When/how do you know you have gotten an important concept through to your students?  Would you like to give an example?

I can tell when I have gotten important concepts through to my students by the projects they create and the conversations they have. I get a lot of insight from things they write in their NearPod lessons too. It’s a great thing because I am able to see various concepts we learned early on in the first semester as they build on them all the way to the present day in the work they do. 

I think one of the times I had to really smile was when one of my students included wants and needs and the 50/30/20 rule in one of her projects. She incorporated what she had learned from NGPF lessons into her Family & Human Services project explaining that these were important simple tools that would be really helpful to her clients. 

Which professional development opportunities have you participated in?

I took my first Certification Class in October (2 actually) and was AMAZED. It was a great experience for so many reasons. I’ve taken 6 Certification Classes to date and plan to take all of the rest. I attended the Virtual PD in January, and a couple of evening Virtual PDs, and I will be going to the in-person conference in March in San Francisco. 

Which one has been your favorite so far? Why?

That’s a tough question! I think I like the Certification Courses the most because I get so many useful tools and materials I can use in my classes. I love being able to talk with teachers from around the country/world and plus it’s great to be able to earn a certificate. 

Can you fill us in on an example of how you have incorporated something you learned from a PD session into your lesson plans?

One of the greatest things about NGPF is that I’m able to take materials from the session and literally use them the next day in class! My first two Certification Courses were Psychology of Money and Career. Both were really helpful for my first semester of teaching CTE. NGPF has been beyond helpful in building the CTE program this year. NGPF is also how I really took the jump into NearPod. I had been in PDs/workshops for NearPod but it was overwhelming to me and it seemed like the materials available were more for younger students. By being on the learning side of NearPod with NGPF I was able to see it work really well and because NGPF gives us the materials to use, I was able to bring them right to my students. Then I took the next step of customizing and then ended up creating my own. I’ve done all sorts of things, I’ve used student packets, NearPod lessons, mini-units, etc. 

Because I work in such a unique environment, it’s often tough to find materials that work well. I think part of why I have done so much with NGPF so quickly is because I have been able to take the high quality, engaging materials and use them both synchronously and asynchronously and they are really easy to customize. To me, this is everything! This has helped me to create a really dynamic program that aligned with my vision, in ways I didn’t even know I could do. 

And here’s one of the things that really fascinates me, I’ve just started. There is so much more available. Even in using the student packets, I haven’t even gotten to the point of using the extension ideas. 

As a side note, because I am teaching via zoom, I’ve been able to pick up some helpful tips and tricks in watching the NGPF instructors that I have been able to use in my zoom classes too. 

What NGPF resources are your favorites/do you rely on the most for your lesson planning?

The curriculum/units I probably look at first. I love all the NearPods. They are really easy to customize and provide so many resources for my students. The semester course NearPod lessons are the majority of the curriculum for the asynchronous Personal Finance course I am piloting this semester. I have used several of the lessons that don’t have NearPods as well. 

About the Author

Beth Tallman

Beth Tallman entered the working world armed with an MBA in finance and thoroughly enjoyed her first career working in manufacturing and telecommunications, including a stint overseas. She took advantage of an involuntary separation to try teaching high school math, something she had always dreamed of doing. When fate stepped in once again, Beth jumped on the opportunity to combine her passion for numbers, money, and education to develop curriculum and teach personal finance at Oberlin College. Beth now spends her time writing on personal finance and financial education, conducts student workshops, and develops finance curricula and educational content. She is also the Treasurer of Ohio Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy.