Award-winning economic lessons developed at IU Kokomo
August 29, 2005
KOKOMO, Ind.—Students of the Indiana University Kokomo Center for Economics will receive three of nine awards that the Indiana Council for Economic Education (ICEE) will present October 12 for outstanding teaching.
Pat O'Brien, who teaches eight grade social studies at Kokomo's Central Middle School, is one of the five regional winners named in the 2005 Olin W. Davis Awards for Exemplary Teaching of Economics in Indiana. Vincent Huffman, a social sciences teacher at Cashton Junior/Senior High School in Fulton, and Debbie Beam, director of Kids' Station Preschool in Mexico, will receive two of the three honorable mention awards.
The Olin Davis awards are presented annually to K–12 teachers who have excelled in teaching and promoting the teaching of economics. To be considered for the awards, O'Brien, Huffman, and Beam each submitted an original economics curriculum that they developed during a spring 2005 course “590 Research in Economics Education” at the IU Kokomo Center of Economic Education. Supported by the ICEE, the campus center offers low-cost training for area teachers on incorporating economic principles into primary and secondary coursework. Professor of Education Margo Sorgman, Ed.D., and Associate Professor of Economics Kathy Parkison, Ph.D., have co-directed and taught for the center since 1997.
“This is the second class that I have taken with Doctors Sorgman and Parkison,” said O'Brien. “In each, I was able to develop a curriculum that is authentic—applicable to the real world experience of my students.”
This past spring, O'Brien taught her award-winning curriculum, “I Can Be an Entrepreneur,” to two eighth grade classes at Central Middle School. Students had to invent an original product or improve upon an existing one. They then developed a business plan by which the product could be produced and marketed.
Huffman combined elements of social studies and economics in his curriculum, illustrating how factors such as the geographic location of a business can affect supply and demand.
Beam created a “Community Workers” curriculum that introduced preschoolers to the concept of earning money through labor. “In testing before the lessons, I was surprised to learn that the children had no clue where money comes from,” Beam said. “They knew that Mommy and Daddy go somewhere and do something every day. But they didn't know that that's how their parents make money for their families.” Students met local wage earners—a sheriff's deputy, postal and hospital workers, firefighters—and learned to identify and count coins and bills. Beam offered the students their own “paychecks” for handling classroom tasks and let them spend their wages in a classroom “store.” After several months of such lessons, the preschoolers demonstrated “a very different attitude” from their earlier indifference to money's source, Beam said. “They knew that people worked for money, and had a real respect and value for how money is spent.”
Beam earned her bachelor's degree in education at IU Kokomo in 1991 and has taken graduate courses in early childhood special education at IU Bloomington. Pat O'Brien is currently a student in IU Kokomo's Master of Science in Education program.
Key Teachers
Sorgman said the 590 Research course extended the Center for Economic Education's usual focus on teaching economics fundamentals. The course showed participating teachers how to assess the effectiveness of their teaching methods by testing classroom outcomes and by discussing what they've learned with peers. According to Sorgman, all of the students in the course designed “dissemination components” in their curricula, ways to promote economics education within their respective schools. “They've become 'key teachers'—teachers teaching other teachers,” she said.
In October, Sorgman will present a paper on the concept of key teachers during the National Council for Economic Education annual meeting at San Antonio, Texas. She co-authored the study with Kathy Parkison and Greg Valentine, Ph.D., director of the Center for Economics Education at the University of Southern Indiana.
