Here’s How Building a Classroom Economy Changed My Class

Hello, hello, and welcome to Episode 34! We’re going to be taking a deep dive into classroom economies today. Now, if you’re unsure what a classroom economy is, I’ll save you the googling trip and just tell you that

A classroom economy is a program that enables teachers to help teach financial literacy and financial responsibility through fun and experiential learning.

Or if you believe in PBIS, which is Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, this is a tool that you can use. So back in March, I found this YouTube video all about classroom economies, and it was a teacher implementing it in their high school, I think social studies class. And he talks about how it just became this community and his family with the students and how they really enjoyed having a purpose within the classroom that wasn’t necessarily just a student role.

And thinking about the year that I’ve had with behaviors in my classroom, I thought this would be a really great opportunity for my students to have a role in a job. I had also just taken a course from Grace Dearborn, who co wrote the Conscious Classroom Management book. And in her workshop, she was talking about how when you have students who have high behaviors, and you give them a purpose or a job, whether that’s, “Oh, hey, will you take this envelope to the office?” Or, “Hey, can you go grab the copies from the printer?” Just that small task can show that you need that student or that student has a purpose in the classroom and can build that relationship.

So with those two things fresh in my mind, I was like, I am going to do this. And in typical Johanna fashion, I just dove in and researched everything I could and created a plan all within a week or two of how I was going to do this. In my research, I came across four pillars, if you will, of things that a classroom economy needs to have classroom jobs, rent and utilities, bonuses and fines and a classroom store. And then I found a secret fifth pillar of I need a place to store all of this information and someone to run this because that ain’t gonna be me.

So first thing I needed to do was figure out what kind of classroom jobs I want to have. Now, in my research, it is found that you want to make sure every student has a job that way everyone is involved in your classroom economy. But I had some classes of like 28 and 30. How was I supposed to come up with that many jobs?! And I will tell you that some of the jobs that I created were unnecessary, but they got the job done, literally.

While I did end up creating about 28 to 30 jobs, I found that these were the most important ones

• Banker
• Teacher’s Assistant
• Messenger,
• Bracket Leader for the attendance bracket that we do
• Attendance Monitor

Now the attendance monitor was a lifesaver, because sometimes I would forget to take attendance. And I could confirm with the sheet that my attendance monitor used.

What I Liked

Now one thing I really enjoyed about having jobs for my students was that end of class time where there’s two or three minutes before the bell rings, that time can be used for students to do their jobs. So they pack up, they do their jobs and line up at the door.

What I Did Not Like

One thing I did not like is as time went on, students got very complacent in their jobs, and that’s on me. But there wasn’t enough intrinsic motivation for students to continue working on their jobs, even though they got paid to do them.

Next Year

So I think next year what I’m going to have is a manage Your or an office manager, make sure that students are doing their jobs. So that is not on me. I’m all about delegation.

Here is the full list of jobs (with their descriptions) I use in my classroom economy.

Moving into our second pillar, rent and utilities are overall bills. This is the part where it makes that real world connections between ‘I have a job where I get a paycheck’, and ‘Some of that money has to actually go to bills.’

So my students had to pay to build rent and utilities. So I made them pay rent on their desk and pay an internet utility fee. Now, of course, kids are like, “But I moved desks every day, how am I supposed to pay rent?” Or “Can I just sit on the floor so I don’t have to pay rent?” And the same one for using computers and not having to pay the utilities bill. And I usually tell them, “I appreciate your creativity. But when you’re in this classroom, you have to pay rent because you are borrowing a desk every day.”

And just like in the real world, if students save up enough money, they can purchase their desk, meaning that every month they no longer have to pay rent. My goal was to make this as real world as possible. I wanted them to have a safe place to practice budgeting and get that experience with money.

What I Liked

Now, one thing I enjoyed about having students pay rent and utilities and have the opportunity to buy their desk was it gave students a goal and a reason for why they had a job and why they got a paycheck, it’s because they had to pay rent. And I know that’s kind of a cyclical reasoning. But for my middle schoolers, it really did give them purpose.

What I Did Not Like

Now one thing I did not like was I priced the rent, and purchasing of their desk to low. Within a month, I had students already purchasing their desk, which doesn’t necessarily simulate what a real world experience would be. So then I had to decide, can those students then buy someone else’s desk? And that student then has to pay the purchasing student rent instead of me? And when I said yes, that became a whole bigger issue and deal for me to handle? And remember who bought whose desk? Did they get their rent? If not, what do I do? It became too convoluted for me to then enjoy the classroom economy.

Next Year

So my steps for next year to improve this is one I am going to raise the rent and utility prices to be more real world level. Because before I had rent at $100, and purchasing a desk at 250, I believe, maybe 300. But I want to change that to be more real world. So maybe rent is $1,500 a month, and then purchasing a desk is like 10,000. And without their paychecks will reflect the change in the economy. But overall, something needs to change to make it more realistic.

Moving into our third pillar is bonuses and fines. The platform I use to host the classroom economy, which I’ll talk about soon, had this thing called the “101 Wheel”. And on this wheel was a mixture of positive and negative things. So sold something on marketplace, fell for an internet scam, had a flat tire, won a raffle.

But inside of my classroom, I also did every day they attended, they got $1 If they got a four on an assessment, they would get $10 if they went above and beyond on their iReady minutes, so every 15 minutes was five more dollars. You can see the bonuses that students would start getting for doing well in class.

And for the fines. I didn’t really do a whole lot with them.  I had an unexcused tardy was minus two and obstruction of learning was minus five. My students came up with that one, not me. But they really enjoyed calling out students being like obstruction of learning, which quickly became a big thing. I had to shut it down. But in the moment, it was cool that students came up with something and owned the economy enough to want to then quote unquote fine people. I think the biggest thing within the bonuses and fines was I had something other than candy to offer students if they won a game or did something good. I had something other than sugar to give them and the best part is making the classroom currency. It didn’t cost me anything other than the time to design it. So it was pretty much a win win situation.

What I Liked

What I Did Not Like

Next Year

And then this brings us to pillar number four, the classroom store. Now, I wanted this to be something more than I have to buy things and my students can purchases with this fake money from our classroom economy. I had seen my mom as a teacher, once a quarter for them put together this elaborate store of things that she found at the Dollar Tree, the dollar section at Target when it was steal, everything was $1. And wow, that was beautiful. And as a student, I would have loved that. That is not in my current budget. So I needed to come up with things that I could put in the classroom store that had very little if any monetary value from me.

Well, I did not come up with a lot of things here. Some of the things that I had:

• Music Pass so students could listen to music during independent work time (and only independent work time)
• Bathroom/Hall Pass
• Choose Your Own Seat Pass

And of those three, the bathroom passes the one that got purchased the most. And I know I said I didn’t buy anything with my own money to support this classroom store. I did purchase snacks for a snack store for our movie. At the end of the school year. I Show Hidden Figures at the end of the school year every year. And I wanted to provide snacks that students could buy for that.

What I Liked

Next Year

And pillar number five is the platform I use to host all of this and do all the transactions for me. I use stash101.com It’s super easy to create a teacher’s account. Everything is free. There’s no paid upgrades. Everything is free. And as a teacher who didn’t want to spend any money that is definitely in my budget. I did watch some tutorials on how to set it up. It’s super simple, there isn’t a lot to it. But there is a lot that you can do with it.

It creates bank accounts for students, it has that 101 wheel that I was talking about, because it’s stash one on one, hence the one on one wheel. Students can purchase things there, they can invest in a 401 K, you can have taxes come out of their paycheck, there is a lot you can do with this platform. And on the teacher platform, you can group students into class periods, you can go into each account and change things if you need to. You have a lot of flexibility with this.

What I Liked

What I Did Not Like

Next Year

All in all my experience doing a classroom economy was very nice. And I enjoyed the outcomes I had, I had a lot of students learn about money and how expensive things are. And tied into the end of the year budget project I did my students that you probably have heard him talk about before.

And with that there’s a lot that I want to change for next year, we always got to adapt and improve to make things the best for our students and for ourselves. If this was something that you enjoy hearing or learning about, please let me know by sending me a message on Instagram or email me.

Or better yet, screenshot this episode on whatever platform you’re using. post it to your Instagram stories and tag me. I want to hear what you enjoy. And so I know if I should keep talking about this or if you’re like, go back to the other stuff, please. I want to make sure that this podcast is for you, and what you want to hear and learn about. And with that my goal is this summer to put out blog posts about how I created this what platforms I use, what jobs I did, because that was the hardest part to start this whole thing was what jobs do I do for 30 students. So I will have everything in blog post throughout the summer. So feel free to check those out as you start your journey in discovering if a classroom economy is right for you and your students.

And with that, I’ll calc-u-later. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai