Wehman & Kregel

Chapter Six

FINANCIAL PLANNING & MONEY MANAGEMENT

 

"The 1997 reauthorization of IDEA blatantly accuses special education classrooms of being expensive havens of lowered expectation And few educational results. Far too many adults who were classified as cognitively impaired as children and who received many years of costly special education services have left school unable to hold jobs or live independently in the community, thus requiring expensive intervention by government-funded programs. The law demands that special education programs be revised to support classrooms where students with disabilities master the skills they need to become self-actualized adults. IDEA also demands that students with disabilities receive these services in a regular education setting with their nondisabled peers to the greatest extent possible. IDEA clearly makes it necessary that all special education programs reevaluate current curriculum and hold teachers accountable for meeting the individual educational needs of students with disabilities using curricula and teaching methods that are research based and focused on increased expectation for learning" (Wehman & Kregel, 2004, pp. 146-147)

By the time students with mild cognitive disabilities reach high school, they lag behind their nondisabled peers in functional academic skills by as much as six years. Beyond this discrepancy, students with mild cognitive disabilities also lack the abilities to generalize skills from the manner and setting in which they learn them to other settings/materials. Students with mild cognitive disabilities will best learn/maintain skills that they learn or apply in naturalized settings with real materials (concrete approach).

Our goal should be to use instructional materials that are as realistic as possible, use natural settings as often as possible, and use community environments to help students generalize skills once they acquire them.

The goal of teaching financial planning and money management skills is to help the learn demonstrate as much independence as possible in managing their own personal finances as they transition to adult life.

In Chapter 6, Kathryn Banks discusses curriculum and instruction for teaching financial planning and money management within natural contexts. Rather than teaching skills within isolated activities, the emphasis is on developing a sequence of events where the skills would be used in real life.

Read "Sequence of Instruction" on pp. 143-146.

Table 6.1 shows how grocery purchasing skills might be addressed across a weekly schedule within a natural context. Review each day and note how instruction progresses to the community. On what day does money management become a component of the lesson? What financial skills become part of the lesson on Thursday?

Read "Community-Based Instruction", p. 147.

Read "Classroom Learning Centers", pages 147-148.

What would you need to do to videotape or take pictures of business locations?

E-mail at spedseve@mnstate.edu your description of a classroom that resembles the community. What stations might you create? Title your description "My community-like classroom by (name).

It is important to involve parents in financial planning and money management instruction. We need to be sure to consider potential barriers to parental participation. Those identified by Wehman & Kregel include: