CHARLOTTE, N.C. — After third grade math teacher Shelby Lattimore delivered the day’s announcements, the “class banker” distributed everyone’s wallets — clasped envelopes decorated with animals, stars, hearts and cars scribbled in marker and filled with the faux money they’d earned this year.
Lattimore asked the class if they knew what inflating a balloon meant. They answered in the affirmative.
“I am inflating your rents,” she responded, drawing a chorus of grunts, complaints and “nos” throughout the poster-covered classroom.
Lattimore has gone viral on TikTok and Instagram for her creative take on teaching financial literacy — using a classroom system that requires her students to pay rent for their classroom essentials, including their own desks.
Every week, viewers watch as her third grade math students collect “Miss Lattimore Bucks” for their classroom jobs.
“We have a teacher assistant, line leader, door holder, recess basket, lunch basket. We have a cleanup crew,” Lattimore said.
“All jobs do not get paid the same,” she said, “The jobs that are every day, like line leader and teacher assistant, like those jobs that you have to do something constantly, get paid more than jobs that are like every now and then or once in a while.”
At the end of the week, students collect their pay and have a decision to make: spend it or save it.
The exercise gives them some practical life skills for the real world, Lattimore said.
“Watching my students now become appreciative of possibly what their guardians are going through, of course in a safer environment, just kind of gives them that responsibility to then move forward as they become adults.”
Financial literacy, meaning having the skills and knowledge to make smart budgeting, saving, investing and other money decisions, is deficient…
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