Bill
When Bill Daniel's junior year high school students come into his financial planning class, they enter a world beyond high school. Suddenly, they are 25 years-old, just out of college, and supporting themselves on a beginning teacher's salary that they are required to budget to the penny. They need to find and rent an apartment, bearing in mind such considerations as renter's insurance; they also select and buy a car after having gotten quotes for loans and insurance; and eventually, they are tasked with purchasing a home.
And then, just to make it even more real, Daniel’s students work with actual clients - friends, neighbors perhaps, but they have to find a family with a child under the age of ten and author a six page college savings analysis illustrating to the parents the savings plan scenarios the family will need to follow in order to save for the child's college tuition.
"I believe in projects. Nearly everything I ask my students to do is a project. I try to create an environment where there's a hook, where they want to be in here, and where they can see the relevance of what they're learning in their life."
Here's an example of that relevance: Daniel has these same students currently preparing tax returns for the elderly and for lower income families – yes, actual tax returns. Students must first train to become certified IRS tax preparers in order to do this. Daniel started this unit of his financial planning course five years ago, and his class is now designated by the IRS as one of the top tax preparation sites in the state of Florida, based upon their low incidence of mistakes on tax returns.
The goal of Daniel’s financial planning course is to reflect financial challenges throughout the span of a person’s lifetime. Daniel details the class’s progression from college to the end of life with glee: "We do the taxes after the education unit, and from there we move on into retirement planning, which transitions them into estate planning, during which I bring in attorneys to review wills, and then at the end of the year, they're dead!"
And by the way, these are just Daniel’s 11th graders. He is simultaneously dissecting corporate annual reports with his freshmen and helping his seniors write market analyses for a year-long business plan in their entrepreneurial class. And his sophomores? On one day recently, they were suited up for job interviews with resumes and cover letters in hand, as part of the Independent Insurance Agents of America's Project InVEST.
Fifteen years ago, Daniel accepted the offer to start a financial magnet program at Orlando's William R. Boone High School, and he's been running it ever since - happily. His is a highly sought after program which this year only accepted 28 of the 63 eighth graders who applied for admittance. Ninety percent of Daniel’s students go on to graduate from college, and many of them end up with a degree that surprises them, but it doesn't surprise Daniel.
"A lot of my students go to college in another course of study and come back to business because they realize just how strong their background is."
Bill Daniel doesn't question it. He's happy to keep the coursework relevant and the students community-focused, and from the sound of it, he could easily go another fifteen years.
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