“Don’t let money be the tool that trips them up” —Gail Vaz-Oxlade

Talking about money and finances has always been an open discussion at our house but has lately become the topic of urgency, because our oldest child is graduating from Grade 12 and starting University in the fall.  She’s been accepted to UBC and we’re about to enter the world of the Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) and accessing those funds we’ve been saving for years now.

Today, the third Wednesday of April, has been designated as Talk with Our Kids About Money Day.  Although it seems kind of early (we are Kindergarten teachers, after all) to be talking about money, we know it’s really important to start forming good habits and a healthy perspective about money at a very young age.  Canada’s Task Force on Financial Literacy views that the improvement of financial literacy among young people should be a shared responsibility, a lifelong process and provided for in public schools.  While Christy and I do not concur exactly with that perspective, we do think that some basic knowledge (attributes of coins and financial role-playing are part of the BC Kindergarten math content), financial “theory” (saving some money every month is important and necessary) and the application of money skills (bake sales) can be taught at school.  However, our belief is that the actual teaching of financial literacy is the role and responsibility of parents because money reflects our personal and family values and morals, and is influenced by our cultural heritage.

So we were very fortunate indeed to hear Canadian financial maven, Gail Vaz-Oxlade, speak to parents at the Kay Meek Theatre in West Vancouver last May.  Gail was invited to speak to the students at our three high schools and she also gave a separate parent session.  Although Gail’s presentation was geared for parents of older students, her expertise and savvy in understanding and using money is applicable for all ages.  Gail gave our audience some tough love; she asked sobering questions and made us reflect on our own financial literacy and money habits.  With her usual wit and wisdom, here are some of the highlights from her talk.

“It’s our job as parents to teach financial literacy.”

This was probably the most important idea that we took away with us that evening.  Gail does not believe that financial literacy should be part of the school curriculum:  Teachers cannot give kids the money to create the real-life learning situations.  Rather, it’s the parents who can give their kids the money and take it away.  As parents, we need to learn, know and help our children smooth the rough edges of their money personality, whether it be hoarder, spender, or impulse purchaser.   

Gail emphasised how as parents we need to take every opportunity of our lives to teach our children about money.  Parents often want financial literacy in the school system because they are uncomfortable talking about it. But she reminded us that as the parents, you are your children’s best teachers:  you taught them how to walk, how to use the toilet and how to talk.  You can use each and every day to talk about money related situations.

“Love your children enough to let them learn the lessons properly.”

As our children are learning their lessons about money, our response to them is important.  Sometimes, as a society we want to label children and teenagers these days as being entitled.  But Gail suggests it’s not things, or stuff, that spoils kids.  We spoil them by not having expectations.  We need to clearly state our expectations to our children, what we will, and will not put up with, and allow the natural consequences of poor decision-making to happen, especially those decisions related to money.  As parents, we want to be our kids’ saviours, saving them over and over again.  But, our children have the right to make their own mistakes and to fix them.  Kids only learn to spot mistakes after they have experienced making them.

So, how do you teach kids about money?

Gail recommends that children receive allowances–to put the money you would normally spend on them in their hands.  Then, set expectations about what they will do with it.  We can teach our children how we accumulate money for planned spending for predictable necessities in our lives such as car or house insurance.  What kind of spending do your children need to plan for?

Some of you may be familiar with the “money jars” for spending, saving and sharing that Gail has discussed in her books and on her television show, “Til Debt Do Us Part.” Because money is an abstract concept, putting it into the jars makes it concrete.  For more information about kids, allowances and the “money jars,” click here.

Children must learn to differentiate between “needs” and “wants.”  As parents, we must use this vocabulary correctly and consistently.  Do we always understand ourselves what we mean by needs and wants?  Because language influences how we think about things and the way we spend our money.

“Financial literacy is what you do to move from being dependent to independent.”

We love Gail’s definition of financial literacy.  She said that “being independent is the healthiest you will ever be.”  Why would we then, as parents, not teach our children the financial skills they need so that they can begin the journey to independence?

Gail cautioned us about keeping secrets about money from our children. We need to teach our children about setting goals, planned spending, emergency funds, how interest and credit works, saving for the long term and bank fees, loans and mortgages, none of which should be a secret.  Let’s talk openly with our children–we’re their parents!  Let’s give them the benefit of our life experiences and teach them about financial literacy while they are young, so that one day they can be informed, knowledgeable, independent young adults making their way in the world.

Thank you so very much to Gail Vaz-Oxlade for continuing to inspire us!

We would also like to thank our Ridgeview colleague, Leanne Pruner, for suggesting these resources for you to consider when talking to your kids about money.

Save, spend, share, invest: How to talk with small kids about money

moneycoachescanada.ca

Money Smart Kid$:  Teach Your Children Financial Confidence and Control by Gail Vaz-Oxlade

A special thing happened 15 months ago and that was the creation of our little website and teacher blog, The Self-Regulated Teacher.  We never dreamed that we would have received over 12,000 views (12,398 to be exact at the time of writing) by over 6500 visitors to read what we had originally planned as one form of communicating learning for our Kindergarten classroom parents.

We carried this idea around for a long time, and with the help, support and encouragement of one of our BFFs, Cari Wilson, Innovation Support Teacher (Technology) for West Vancouver and our Ridgeview Principal, Valerie Brady, we published our first post in December 2014.  We’re appreciative of the positive feedback from our classroom parents and others readers of this blog.  Thank you for leaving us your kind comments and questions.

As we reflect on the various ways to communicate learning that we’ve used over the years, beyond the three written report cards, parent-teacher conferences and Student-Led Conferences, our primary method has been the classroom newsletter we’ve written every week since we started teaching, from Kindergarten to Grade 4 (not including the years we were Learning Support teachers).  We originally wrote this by hand until recently when we’ve started to post it online.

Each and every parent group has always enjoyed, “This Week in Our Room,” to review the goings-on of the past week, with reminders for the upcoming week.  We know those newsletters graced many fridges, were placed in special binders or pinned to the family bulletin board.  Families tell us how they kept all those handwritten paper newsletters from the Kindergarten year as a classroom memory.

Our families need to know, and love knowing, what’s happening in their child’s school life.  Supporting the children in their learning, and extending the learning at home, requires that parents have an awareness of the classroom routines, curriculum and activities.  In our situation, we wanted parents to be able to take the information we provide through the newsletter, and use that as a basis for conversation beyond the ubiquitous, “What did you do at school today?”  Our classroom parents are knowledgeable about what their child is doing at school, and can ask the pertinent questions to help uncover the learning gems each child knows.

We realise that our level of communication is going to be different in Kindergarten, compared to a student in the older grades.  Our children are more than able to share with their parents what we do at school, but the rationale for an activity might not be as clear to them or there were too many reminders on a certain day, and we like our parents to know these things.  We consider classroom communication a teaching responsibility, so if reminding our parents to send along a pair of rain boots for outdoor play, or making suggestions for reading at home, contributes to a fun and successful school experience, then we’re going to do it.

We’ve noticed an increase in the number of working parents in our classes over the years and as working parents ourselves, we wanted to improve when and how information can be accessed and technology has allowed us to do so.  Working parents cannot always drop by the classroom to see the latest bulletin board display or see when it’s their child turn to be the next Special Helper.  Our first foray into digital home and school communication started with the app Remind, which delivers text messages from the teacher to the classroom families from an account separate from your smartphone.  It allows us to schedule Remind texts days and weeks ahead, as we think of them, and to include photos as well.  We highly recommend it as an excellent method to send reminders home.

From Remind we made the jump to writing and posting the newsletter online.  It’s actually easier and faster for us now, because Christy and I would meet in person or discuss by phone what we were going to write. We can write our newsletters and blog posts on Google Docs, share it with each other and we can both be reading, revising and editing at the same time (as we’re doing right now), or when it’s convenient for us, before we copy it into WordPress, our blogging platform.

We don’t necessarily endorse that a classroom website and weekly blogging is for everyone.   We were already used to writing the newsletter, and looking for ways to increase our efficiency and reduce paper consumption.  We now write a short blog followed by the newsletter on Fridays.  We work on it over the week, adding bits of information as we think of it.

On Sunday we write a blog post that is current and relevant for what’s happening in our classrooms and at our school.  These blogs take more time because of the topics we choose to write about; however, we love sharing what we’ve learned through our teaching and experience and have achieved a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment through writing and publishing.  We’re not going to romanticize blogging, though.  Although I love writing and have a passion for writing, writing takes time and periodic bouts of writer’s block can seriously extend the amount of time you were planning to spend on writing one post, never mind how the rest of your evening (or day) was affected.

Our Kindergarten website focuses on school and classroom expectations and routines, and foundation learning for our students.  Again, our original intention was to write a Kindergarten Handbook, a “how-to” for negotiating Kindergarten here at Ridgeview, and we decided to just have everything, our newsletters, blog and handbook information in one place, theselfregulatedteacher.com.  You can read more about “Becoming The Self-Regulated Teacher” here.