This past July, 35 teachers from Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey participated in a week-long training program at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia to learn how to implement Keys to Financial Success, a personal finance curriculum developed jointly by the CEEE and the Philadelphia Fed. Offered free of charge every year since 2001, the training program models effective strategies to teach the engaging lessons and activities that are part of the Keys curriculum. It also features presentations by distinguished members of the financial community on topics such as credit, risk protection, and consumer rights and responsibilities.

Although Keys is built on themes (goals and decision-making, career research planning, budgeting, savings and investing, credit, transportation, housing, and risk protection), the curriculum features strategies to make the themes relevant to students. For example, students are instructed to research entry-level salaries of careers that interest them. They are then instructed to allocate their estimated after-tax funds to saving, investment and expected expenses.

Based on their career and life-style choices and using technological tools contained in the curriculum package, students create portfolios of resources and plans to assist them in reaching their financial goals. By following this procedure they learn what it takes to make sound decisions about their financial futures.

To date, more than 24,000 students in the tri-state area have participated in the Keys curriculum since its implementation in 2001. 

Eighteen teachers from across Delaware received helpful tips on how to mentor the Stock Market Game (SMG) in their fourth-12th grade classrooms at a training workshop held at the University of Delaware on September 10th. After providing an overview of how financial markets raise capital to finance business growth, the workshop demonstrated how to navigate the SMG website to research public companies, enter trades at real-time prices for securities listed on the New York and Nasdaq exchanges and monitor the value of portfolios and rankings.  

The Stock Market Game is an educational simulation developed and administered by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) and offered in Delaware by the CEEE since 1983. The Investor Protection Unit of the Delaware Department of Justice sponsors the SMG in Delaware.

Teams of two to six students invest a virtual $100,000 in securities that they trade on the Stock Market Game website. At the end of the game, the team achieving the greatest portfolio growth in each of the elementary, middle, high and after-school divisions is declared a winner. Students on the winning teams are honored at awards receptions hosted by the CEEE at the University of Delaware.

Each year, more than 2,400 students in Delaware learn about the world of investing by participating in the Stock Market Game. Dates for the current school year's fall and spring games are set for October 6-December 12, 2014 and March 2-May 8, 2015.

This fall, more than 600 University of Delaware freshmen in the College of Arts and Sciences are learning the importance of saving, budgeting financial resources and using credit wisely in twenty-nine 50-minute sessions developed and taught by CEEE staff and volunteers from Bank of America. Now in its sixth consecutive year, the program, called First Year Experience (FYE), continues to provide essential personal finance and money management skills that most college students do not possess, according to both students and program presenters. Plans are underway to offer the successful FYE session to students in other colleges across the university.

The first session, titled "Credit: The Most Important Grade You'll Ever Earn," opened this fall's First Year Experience. Students learned how a credit score impacts the interest rate charged on borrowed funds and how to maintain a good credit score. The second session, titled "Constructing a Sound Financial Future," focused on the importance of living within one's income and building savings and investment strategies. Students learned two important rules: "Don't buy stuff you can't afford" and "Pay yourself first, save early and save often."