Why I Flew Cross-Country for a Stock Market Event and Turned It Into a Kids' Class
People thought I was a little nuts when I flew cross-country to attend a retail investor event. I spent nearly 20 of 48 hours talking to people about stocks. I sat through SEC EDGAR webcasts. I tuned into GameStop earnings calls. I went to an MMTLP press conference at the SEC. And I took notes the whole time -- not for my portfolio, but for my students.
Let me explain why.
I teach financial literacy to kids ages 9 to 14. And one of the biggest challenges in teaching this subject is that most educational materials about money are either painfully boring or completely disconnected from what's actually happening in the real world. Kids can smell irrelevance from a mile away. If I'm going to teach them about the stock market, I need to be IN the stock market conversation -- not reading about it from a textbook published in 2008.
So I went where the action was. I listened to retail investors debate market mechanics. I watched the SEC respond to real concerns about transparency. I heard everyday people describe their experience navigating a financial system that wasn't designed for them. And I thought: my students need to understand this world. Not someday. Now.
That trip became the backbone of my Meme Stock Market Bingo pack. Every headline in that pack is real. Every vocabulary term connects to something actually happening in financial markets. The bingo format makes it playful, but the content is serious -- 144 real financial headlines, 30+ vocab terms, headline-writing challenges, a reflection journal, and an original song that makes finance terms memorable.
Here's what drives me. We live in a world where a teenager can open a brokerage account on their phone in three minutes. They can buy options before they understand what options are. They can lose real money on meme stocks before they've ever heard the word "volatility" in a classroom. The financial world didn't wait for our kids to be ready -- it came to them through their feeds and their friends. So we need to meet them there.
Chelsey L. said about my financial literacy class: "This class helped my son think critically about how he manages his time and how he can use that same thinking to manage and budget his money." That critical thinking is exactly what I'm building. Not hot stock tips -- thinking skills.
I flew cross-country because I believe kids deserve a teacher who goes to the source. Who shows up. Who doesn't just assign a chapter about "supply and demand" and call it economics education.
Your kid is already living in a financial world. Let's make sure they understand it.
