Chicago Seminar Snapshot: Meet DECA State Advisor Gail Betts

KWHS is excited that our PwC-KWHS Seminar for High School Educators on Business and Financial Responsibility is expanding into Chicago on October 9, 2015. In the meantime, we will be posting profiles of a few of the teacher attendees who are champions of high school financial literacy and business education. Read More

by Diana Drake

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KWHS is excited that our PwC-KWHS Seminar for High School Educators on Business and Financial Responsibility is expanding into Chicago on October 9-11, 2015. In the meantime, we will be introducing a few of the Midwest teacher attendees who are champions of high school financial literacy and business education. 

Gail Betts is a DECA state advisor who taught business and marketing to her students for 10 years. She is now a self-described “teachers’ teacher.” Gail works for the Arkansas Department of Career Education in Little Rock, Arkansas, as a business and marketing program advisor.

Gail’s deep love for teaching motivated her to want to share her knowledge and passion with fellow teachers. She currently teaches workshops to middle school and high school teachers, and is always on the lookout for resources to enhance her professional development opportunities.

To that end, Gail is really looking forward to attending the upcoming PwC-KWHS Seminar for High School Educators on Business and Financial Responsibility in Chicago. She hopes to learn more approaches to help teachers “prepare students for life skills, such as managing college loans, buying a house and cars and understanding credit cards.” Gail wants to make sure that all Arkansas high school graduates can face the world with confidence in their financial abilities.

Arkansas has a graduation requirement for students to complete one semester in financial literacy. Gail says, “With so much to teach and with so much for the students to learn, we could immerse them in all facets of business both personally and professionally and expand the requirement to a year-long course. In addition to learning financial literacy, this is teaching them how to be good citizens.”

At the seminar, Gail hopes to explore the ways in which she can make these ideas a reality. She is very exited to learn more about the Knowledge@Wharton High School financial-literacy lesson plans, and plans to bring them back to her classrooms. She thinks “as educators we have more of an opportunity than parents to have an impact on teaching students the life lessons of personal finance. We need the tools to accomplish this.”

Gail is also excited to share her ideas and collaborate with other educators in Chicago in an effort to elevate financial literacy among high school students across the Midwest. Says Gail: “As teachers, our job is to prepare these students for life, not just a job.”

To date, PwC and Knowledge@Wharton High School have had the pleasure of meeting and working with more than 700 high school business and personal finance educators like Gail Betts through our Seminars for High School Educators at Wharton campuses in Philadelphia and San Francisco. You can visit our October Chicago seminar website to learn more about our seminar mission and speakers.

Our next seminar will be held in Philadelphia on November 13-15, 2015. To discover more about this and future opportunities, including our San Francisco seminar in June, please contact KWHSseminar@wharton.upenn.edu. Join the financial literacy and business education conversation on Twitter @WhartonHS and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/whartonhs.

Knowledge@Wharton High School is an initiative of The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania that promotes business, financial literacy, entrepreneurship and leadership among high school students and educators around the world through quality online content and competitions.