High School Resources
Our financial education high school curriculum, Empowered!, is focused on 7 core principles: Economic Concepts, Money Management, Banking, Credit, Insurance, Investing, and Consumer Protection.
High School Curriculum
Empowered! is a complete 9 week curriculum unit that can be used to support teachers responsible for fulfilling the FinEd unit for high school students.
Empowered! is suitable for use in any academic discipline or course in which the FinEd Unit is embedded. It includes all 7 required Financial Education content topics (Economic Concepts, Money Management, Banking, Credit, Insurance, Investing, and Consumer Protection), as students progress to create and describe their own vision and plan for financial empowerment.
For High School teachers looking for curriculum relevant for a semester or full year Financial Education course, University of Chicago’s finEDge program can be used. Grants may be available for this pay-for, quality curriculum. Please reach out to Dustin Voss, dkvoss@cps.edu or Tere Regina, tregina@cps.edu to inquire further.
Curricular Resources
- Empowered Curriculum: The complete 9-week curriculum unit created by CPS to support teachers responsible for fulfilling the FinEd unit for high school students (last updated 2018).
- Curriculum Crosswalk: A supplement to Empowered! that is constantly updated as a support document for High School teachers containing links to teaching resources and support in planning students’ required FinEd unit.
- Financial Education Writing/Word Processing Prompts: Writing prompts to assess students’ learning in Financial Education.
- Appendix B: Extended Learning Opportunities: A few ideas from Empowered!’s Appendix B for students to take informed action.
- CPS FinEducators Google Classroom: Join our community and see new resources posted weekly.
- Ngpf.org: Units, Lessons, case studies, interactives, arcade, professional learning, and more.
- ECON Lowdown: From the St. Louis Fed, search-filter-enabled learning activities for k-12.
- MRU.org: Entire courses and teaching resources. Primarily for Economics resources.
- Cowin Financial Literacy Program: From the Teachers College at Columbia University, high quality case studies and teacher guides for your FinEd unit.
- EconEdLink: The Council on Economic Educations search-filter-enabled resources for K12. Includes the assessment platform Ready Assessments.
- Econ Essentials from CME Group: Lessons, modules, videos, and more from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
- Discover Pathways to Financial Success: Student-Facing modules.
- EverFi: Our partner offers dozens of online student-facing learning modules accessible through CPS cleve.
- Empowered Curriculum Crosswalk: For our CPS teachers, resources organized to support and update the Empowered Curriculum.
From our partners that offer curriculum packages that can be used as part of your Financial Education unit or course.
- FoolProofMe: A free set of lessons, student facing modules, and assessments organized around the principle of Healthy Skepticism.
- University of Chicago’s FinEDGE: A complete curriculum package suitable for a semester-long or full year course. Contact us to coordinate funding for your school or classroom.
General Resources and Opportunities
- For teachers or administrators wishing to stay current on updated curricular resources and opportunities related to Financial Education, or to share your own schools’ success, please join our Google Classroom.
- ODLSS list of supports for Diverse Learners: Get Real and Practical Money Skills. Examine the entire list for even more resources to address the needs of diverse learners.
- CAUSE CHICAGO: A resource guide for immigrant/undocumented students created and organized CPS Department of College and Career Success.
- BankOn Chicago: Not a curricular resource, but a project to provide high quality, no overdraft-fee accounts to Chicago residents. Applicable for teachers serving underserved communities.
- For teachers or administrators wishing to join our powerful community of FInEducators, stay current on updated curricular resources and opportunities related to Financial Education, or to share your own schools’ success, please join our Google Classroom by emailing Tere Wang at tregina@cps.edu.
- Sign up for our monthly Financial Education Newsletter here for the latest updates on student opportunities and programs, current events and various topics to incorporate into the classroom, updated curricular resources from our financial education partners, and much more!
- Sign up for a Financial Education Professional Development sessions on our SY22 PD Calendar!
- Are you curious as to who fulfills the Financial Education requirement across the different schools in our district? Access our tracking database here. Need to provide an update for your school? Please email Tere Wang, Financial Education Manager, at tregina@cps.edu with your update(s).
- NPR’s Planet Money Podcast
- Teach and Retire Rich Podcast (11/12/21)
- Non-profit: 403bwise.org
- CPS Virtual Library
Please note: We are working on updating our Empowered! curriculum this year based on last year’s PLC to be more culturally responsive and sustaining, with the goal to also be Skyline ready next year.