Spotlight 4 Success

Bringing Economic Concepts to Life for Students

• American Book Company

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Unlock the secrets of making economics come alive in the classroom with a promise of inspiration, as we sit down with Melissa Hegarty from the Georgia Council on Economic Education. Melissa's unexpected journey from aspiring history teacher to economics aficionado during the Great Recession laid the foundation for her innovative teaching approach. Discover how she harnesses dynamic classroom activities like auctions and the Stock Market Game to engage over 26,000 students in Georgia, helping them master financial capability while seamlessly integrating math and social studies. Her transformative methods breathe new life into economics education, turning concepts into accessible and exhilarating learning experiences.

Devin Pintozzi:

This podcast, Spotlight for Success, is our way of highlighting the incredible success stories happening in education right here in our home state of Georgia. Today, we're thrilled to be joined by Melissa Hagerty, with Georgia Council of Economics and Education, or Educational Economics, who has made a significant impact in the field of social studies education. We'll explore her journey, insights and the positive changes she's creating for students and teachers. So let's get started. Melissa, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Melissa Hegarty:

Well, hi, I'm Melissa Hegarty, so I work for the Georgia Council on Economic Education, or GCEE for short, and my role is a stock market game coordinator. So I help over 26,000 students a year across Georgia play the stock market game, and so I train teachers on how to teach the stock market game effectively in their classroom. So I do workshops all across Georgia training teachers about how to teach students about investing and how to help them build their financial capability. And before I came to GCE, I was a high school economics teacher for 10 years.

Devin Pintozzi:

Wow, that is quite a story there. So tell me about your work when going a little further back into your economics education and what kind of? Did you have any strong moments or takeaways that you're like? That was an amazing aha time teaching economics.

Melissa Hegarty:

That's a great question. So actually I didn't want to be an economics teacher, I wanted to be a history teacher. But I graduated from school during the Great Recession and there weren't any jobs for history teachers but there were jobs for economics teachers, and so at least that's what I heard at the time while I was still in graduate school. And so because I there were econ jobs, I kind of resigned myself. Well, I guess I'll take this class on how to teach economics. I don't really want to, but I guess I'll do it.

Melissa Hegarty:

And I had this fabulous Dr, Shelby Frost. She was wonderful and I started to see, you know, like economics could be pretty interesting. And then one day, we had a guest speaker come to our class, Mike Raymer from the Georgia Council on Economic Education, the organization that I work for, actually came to my graduate class and they did this amazing simulation that was so fun. I think the simulation was some sort of auction that related to economics and about making decisions and scarcity, and I had no idea that economics could be something that was so much fun and hands-on and I really started to fall in love with it because they came to my class and showed us how econ could be fun, and so I continued the course and ended up getting a job teaching economics. And all these years later now I'm helping teachers teach economics.

Devin Pintozzi:

Wow, what a story.

Melissa Hegarty:

Yeah,

Devin Pintozzi:

So I can tell you're very excited to see how you can help students and also how you yourself were helped to get interest in economics through almost a gamification process,

Melissa Hegarty:

Absolutely.

Devin Pintozzi:

You know one with the auction and now with the stock markets.

Melissa Hegarty:

Yes.

Devin Pintozzi:

So tell me about that. Okay, so what was the goal in the auction? And then I want to know what was the goal in the economics, in the stock market game, for the students that are working with those?

Melissa Hegarty:

Okay, so the auction when they came to my class and I was a graduate student, I had to think way back, because there are, first of all, I want to say there are so many fun auctions that you can do in economics. There are just a million ways that you can include them in your curriculum. But I think this one was one that you used the first day of class, where students had a set amount of money and there was a mystery bag and and full of items, and you didn't know what was in the bag, and so you had to make a decision of whether you wanted to bid on the item now or whether you wanted to wait to see what was next and so it was really just about making these economic decisions with and also confronting scarcity as well.

Melissa Hegarty:

So it was a great way to introduce economics. Also another great way of doing auctions is we always do I always used to do inflation auctions, where I would conduct an auction with you know a handful of items that might be like a fun size candy bar, some writing utensils, a bag of chips, something like that, and students would have you know some sort of fictional currency to bid on the items. But you know, we'd go through the auction and students would say, oh, I didn't have enough money to buy anything, I'm so frustrated. And I would say you know, I'm feeling generous today, I'm going to give everyone a raise. And so I would go around and be like Oprah you get money and you get money and you get money. And everyone got more money. And we did the auction again and they would find out that they weren't any better off, but just prices went up.

Melissa Hegarty:

And yeah, it was a great way for students to learn, yeah, so those sorts of activities really made me fall in love with that style of teaching which GC is really about, which is hands-on, engaging lessons for students, and so the stock market game is also one of those sorts of activities that students can do, where students play in teams of three to five students on a team and they get a fictional $100,000, and they invest it in the stock market for 10 weeks. So they're investing in real stocks, even though it's a simulation they're investing in. It could be Apple, it could be Amazon, Walmart, McDonald's, and whatever is happening with those companies in the real world happens in the stock market game to their prices. So it's really relevant and practical and fun. It's a great way to tie in current events and math, um, and as well as social studies.

Melissa Hegarty:

So, yeah, it's great

Devin Pintozzi:

Wow, what a what an amazing thing to engage your student populations with, uh, something that's so important. Well, thank you. Whether they actually buy stocks or they participate in a 401k or an IRA, or whatever they do in life, they have that experience of seeing what that's like to win and to lose.

Melissa Hegarty:

Yes, exactly, we feel very passionately about this. We want- So many people think that investing in the stock market is just something for rich people, but it is accessible to anyone, and having knowledge about it is power, and I really feel very strongly about the stock market game Because it's $100,000 of hypothetical money. Students have a safe space to try out what they're learning in class, and if their investments do well, that's wonderful, and if their investments don't do so well, then that's a learning experience that they have to grow with going forward and decide that you know what, when I'm investing my real money one day, I'm not going to take as many risks as I did this time, and so I know how I want to improve my investing style going forward.

Devin Pintozzi:

That is awesome. I love that. So I'd love to hear what you are doing here at GCSS.

Melissa Hegarty:

Well, that is a great question. So we're here to talk about everything that we do at the Georgia Council on Economic Education, and also about the stock market gain specifically. So I had a session this morning with teachers about teaching the stock market game, and we did one of the lessons from our workshop where we do a skit where it's about a little girl who has a lemonade stand company and she wants to make it big and expand her lemonade stand, and so she tries all these different ways to get more money. She goes to a bank but they turn her down. They say that she's too risky. She goes to a rich investor they won't give her money.

Melissa Hegarty:

So, eventually, she has an IPO, an initial public offering, and sells stock in her company, and so we learned from that how the stock market works.

Devin Pintozzi:

Wow.

Melissa Hegarty:

And so that's what we did in my session today.

Devin Pintozzi:

Wow, I bet you had some great participation.

Melissa Hegarty:

We did, we did. We had some fabulous actors there. Little did these teachers know that they were going to be asked to be actors for like an hour today in my session, but they were wonderful.

Devin Pintozzi:

Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Yes, wow. Do you have any key takeaways from GCSS you'd like to share with the audience, or something else that you'd like to share?

Melissa Hegarty:

I think that GCSS is such a wonderful opportunity for a teacher to be exposed to things, to new ideas, new ways of teaching that you never would have thought of. I used to come to GCSS when I was a teacher and I would come back with all of these new lessons and ideas, and it was just such an invigorating and energizing experience that you come back excited about all of these new materials that you can use in your class and all these new ideas.

Devin Pintozzi:

Wow

Melissa Hegarty:

Yes

Devin Pintozzi:

That is amazing, thank you, Melissa. So we appreciate Melissa being here with us with the Georgia Council of Economics Education, and we look forward to hearing about you when you come back, hopefully next year, to inform the educational community out there. Again, this is ABC's Spotlight for Success. We are here for you, thank you.