Young Entrepreneurs
Citizen Teacher Shows Kids How To Invest

Pension consultant Christine Loughlin came across Citizen Schools online in the fall of 2005, and she knew right away that she wanted to get involved. “Just civic responsibility, I guess,” she recalls. “After ten to fifteen years of being career obsessed, I looked for opportunities to play a more active role in the community.  Given there was only one thing I knew anything about—money and investing—I thought about teaching it.”

She signed up to become a Citizen Teacher at the Edison Middle School in Boston, and taught a group of sixth and seventh graders an apprenticeship about starting their own business. With help from Citizen Schools staff, she developed a curriculum that grounds financial principles in real-world activity. On the first day, she sent students home with a candy bar to sell for as much as they could get. “They saw the difficulty of sales!” she says.

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By the end of the semester, her apprentices joined the four other business-based Citizen Schools courses from across Boston to publicly present their accomplishments—their WOW!s—at an event called Kids Invest. Their booth of hand-made T-shirts and ornaments made more money than any of the other groups. Christine remembers the impression that left: “They loved it when they felt the success of people wanting to buy what they'd made—the recognition that they'd done something.”

When she returned to the middle school in the spring, she brought several colleagues with her from her office at New England Pension Consultants. As a group, they taught an investment apprenticeship called “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” which showed students how to develop good habits about money—“smart cents.”  They sponsored a contest awarding iPods to the apprentices who could make the most positive economic difference for themselves by opening a bank account, growing its balance, saving their allowance, and cutting back spending. They also competed in the Massachusetts Stock Market Game, sponsored by Morgan Stanley and the Boston Globe. 

“Winning is everything when you have esteem issues,” Christine says, “which is something all kids have at that age.” These apprentices certainly got a boost. The Citizen Schools Edison teams placed second and third among the 200 competing in the middle school division, and the iPod winners also got to keep their savings. Christine once again recognized the impression success left with these kids.

Christine is back for her third apprenticeship this fall, and she's proud to spread her newfound enthusiasm for teaching among her coworkers.

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