In conjunction with the National Council for Social Studies Annual Conference, Nina's piece on teaching perspective and Economics through simulations was published here. Please read and let us know what you think!
As part of our Social Studies curriculum, Gabby and I teach Economics to 5th graders (although next year, we are moving to 3rd grade and are developing a brand new geography curriculum this summer - stay tuned!). We are often asked how we do this and how we expect 10 years olds to understand something so complicated that many adults don’t understand fully. Our response: laying a groundwork in elementary school will help our students understand more as adults. Also, challenging and countering previously held beliefs only gets more difficult as students get older so it is essential that we explore the realities of money, poverty, and class while our students are still in elementary school and remain somewhat open-minded.
Many of the activities we use in this unit sprang from our students’ misconceptions or desires to learn more. When we start this unit, we often hear variations of “people are poor because they don’t work hard” or “if people want more money, they should get a job.” We use a variety of different simulations and activities to try to dispel these myths. First, we simulate the distribution of wealth with classroom chairs, and then with baked goods. It is a lot of fun until the baked treat comes out, and then we hear about how unfair it is (and sometimes see some real tears).
My favorite part of this simulation is hearing the students’ reflections when they realize that we really are only giving baked goods to the students designated as the “top 10%” of the income bracket (everyone else gets crumbs - use the link above to read more details). At first, they think it is a joke or that we are making a point, but will give treats to everyone eventually. No. We are dividing the doughnuts (or brownies, or cookies) the way wealth is distributed in the United States. No exceptions.
This simulation is also fascinating because it encourages students to share how, why, and when they think or talk about money. Many of them share that it is “rude” to talk about money and they worry it might make people uncomfortable. Once we give them some facts, however, they have SO many questions. They are shocked that a household income of $250k means you are in the top 2% and earn more than 98% of Americans (these statistics are from 2010-13, so they are not up to date). While these numbers are confusing and percents are relatively new to ten year olds, we have found that using the framework of If the United States were a Village of 100 People helps clarify the concepts for them.
Our next simulation is the Sinking Ship simulation. This activity has so many applications and teaches so many skills! Students have to think critically, negotiate, debate, argue, organize and so much more. They also realize their own biases when they think about which professions or roles they inherently value (senator, doctor, lawyer) and which roles they quickly discount (nanny, taxi driver, person who is currently unemployed). This activity helps our students think about power, wealth, status, and value. It’s also a reminder that circumstances can always change and humans should not be defined or limited by their experiences. Again, we often hear that the decision making process is unfair or biased. Our response: how does that relate to the real world?
This past school year, we wrote a new simulation inspired by our visit to Alta Gracia in the Dominican Republic last summer. It required a lot of planning as there were so many details to work out, but the end result was even better than we expected. We call it our Factory simulation and had the students in three groups: non-unionized factory members, unionized factory members, and office workers. You can read more about the details if you follow the link, but we found this experience really helped our students overcome the idea that “hard work” conquers all. They also talked a lot about the constant stress they were under and how not having health insurance meant they had extra unforeseen costs that could take their whole paycheck (if only I could lead some of our senators through this activity)! They also learned the importance of organizing before striking or protesting and how a power imbalance only makes those actions more risky and difficult.
Last, but certainly not least, we engage students in our beloved Pom Pom simulation which simulates privilege. We love this activity for so many reasons and it teaches us so many things about our students. They are always outraged with the process and often angry with each other (and us). I’m always amazed at how quickly the “wealthy and powerful” group moves into a defensive position of their role and how any suggestions of redistribution or helping the other groups are quickly quashed. I also love hearing the real world connections students make when thinking about who has power and privilege in our society (and who doesn’t).
An important disclaimer for every simulation is that these brief experiences are NOT THE SAME as real life and whatever emotions you feel, it does not mean that you “know what it feels like” to experience poverty, oppression, discrimination etc. However, we find that students’ perceptions change after experiencing frustration and getting a (very) small glimpse into another perspective or experience. Our students frequently relate that our Economics unit taught them “things they never heard before” and we hope they take this knowledge and awareness out into the world with them! At the very least, we hope to encourage their capacity for empathy and ability to see others as human beings regardless of their circumstances.
The cards we used for "life twists" that different students received throughout the simulation.
“I don't understand why other companies treat their factory workers inhumanely if you can still be successful if you treat people like people.”
Economics 101 is in full swing in 5th grade!
We tried out a BRAND new simulation today and were reminded how difficult it is to check all of the details for experiential learning activities. Whew!
That being said-- we are pleased with what our students experienced and how they are now thinking about different types of work, wages, and the many levels and layers of circumstances that can alter people's financial stability.
SET UP:
This one is complicated to set up. We have three groups, and each group had different tasks and varying working environments:
Office workers (5 students)
A group of unionized factory workers (11 kids, based off of Alta Gracia and employees we interviewed there this past summer-- check them out!!!)
A group of factory workers (10 kids, based off of Levis and Timberland factories we learned about this summer).
We also ended up having a 4th group (slightly unplanned..) who ended up being unemployed (they went on strike and their classmates did not follow them so they got fired!). They were hired for temporary employment by the office workers and did small jobs around the classroom. This proved to be an interesting dynamic that added to the simulation.
EXPERIENCE:
Students work hard following the directions on their assignment sheets. Every once in awhile teachers would come over and say it was 'pay day' (we had 3 of these) and give each member of the group the points they earned for their work. For the most part, the students worked really hard at their jobs and had interesting conversations about quality of their work environment and how to best navigate it. The majority decided to 'put their heads down' and work harder.
TWISTS:
Teachers also came around when it wasn't 'pay day' time and provided circumstance cards that students needed to calculate into their paychecks. The circumstance cards ranged from "Your child had a fever, you bought medicine -2 points" to things like "You have had a death in the family and you need to cover the funeral costs". There were multiple health related cards that could add up (hand pain from repetitive motions, back pain, breathing issues from dust in the factory) all of which we learned different individuals suffered from especially in the Timberland and Levis factory locations. These cards began to frustrate students and heightened the stress in the room. Of course there were some cards (especially for the office team) for getting +4 for a promotion or a boss noticing their hard work.
Another twist we saw was that some of the Office workers went to 'donate' points to the factory workers. They donated 1 point to each person. (They were making 100 points per paycheck while the non-unionized factory workers were making 10 points per paycheck). It was interesting to see the different responses to these donations and how some of the donations didn't help people's overall situations.
THEIR REFLECTIONS:
Our students were STRESSED!!! They talked a lot about how they were worried about making deadlines, how hard they were working, and how scary it was to receive a card and know you were barely keeping any money. A couple of them talked about how they felt they weren't paid for the level of work they were doing and felt like no one noticed how HARD they were working. The bracelet group made extra bracelets in hopes of a raise and they didn't receive one.
OUR OBSERVATIONS:
We found it fascinating to see the conversations about strikes and organizing.
We found it really interesting to see how the 'financial' hits felt -- from the higher Office group one student talked about how she took a big hit one week taking care of a family member and then she felt bad that she didn't want to be part of the office people who donated money to the factory workers who didn’t have clean water. And then she realized exactly how little her peers in the factories were making and felt like she should donate.
Overall we noticed that emotions ran high, we appreciated their thoughts on continuous stress and will continue that conversation as we take on other's perspectives -- constant stress is a very challenging struggle and we are glad they have the teensy-tiniest insight into what that might be like for someone.
We are thinking about the twist with unemployed workers and temporary workers (they would work for even 1 point) and how that added to the overall experience of learning about labor (even though we didn’t plan it). Next, we are going to work with the Math teacher to create a budgeting simulation!
"I learned that the small population of the upper class have more money than the huge population of the middle class. I do not think it is fair because a small amount people get a huge advantage over the massive amount of people in the middle/lower class."
That's right, today in class we talked about the very agreeable subject of…. Money! We started our Economics unit yesterday with a simulation. In our activity we had the students do IR (independent reading) in spaces that simulated how wealth is distributed in the US.
For example:
1 student has 11 chairs (wealthiest 1% has 42% of US wealth)
3 students have 9 chairs (next 9% has 36% of US wealth)
22 students have 6 chairs (bottom 90% has 22% of US wealth)
This part of the simulation was all fun and games for us. We squealed and giggled and playfully whined about our legs being squished trying to cram onto those 6 chairs. But then…
We brought out two large doughnuts, and we split the doughnuts along the same proportions. As you can imagine, this made the division of "wealth" much more real. The complaints about 'fairness' and frustrations began to fly. After the students representing the bottom 90% had a few minutes to squabble over how to split up the remaining part of a doughnut between all 22 of them, we called all of the students back together for discussion.
We started by asking: How are you feeling right now? Students went around and shared one word summing up their current emotional state. Many students said “unfair,” while the student who represented the top 1% said “deliciously luxurious.”
Other questions we asked were:
What did you notice? How might you have felt or acted if you were in a different group? What are you thinking about money/wealth? What connections can you make to your life or to the world around you?
A very rich discussion ensued, including students reflecting about how they learned how to talk about money (or not talk about money, as the case may be). They described how it felt to learn about the reality of wealth distribution in our country, but simultaneously try to figure out how to feel sort of comfortable doing so and avoid being rude or making people feel bad.
Another image - the 2 parts really help students conceptualize the numbers!
Below are a few of our additional thoughts (from discussion time but also students’ homework reflections):
Here are some things that make us think about money:
When a bill comes (like the water bill)
When my mom goes to the bank
Electronics
Gifts
When other people talk about it
When people talk about their gifts
Houses.. And other people’s houses
Here are some questions we have now that we have entered our initial study of economics:
Around how many people are in the upper class?
Besides housing, food, and care, what advantages does the upper class have?
What if you make little money (so you are considered experiencing poverty), but your parents give you a lot of money. What “class” are you in then?
What would it be like if, for a different country, people did the same thing and calculated the distribution of wealth. What would it be like?
Out of all the people in the middle class in DC, how many people are in the upper middle class?
Will there be a test?
What class is my family in?
Let us know if you talk about money, wealth, or class in your classroom. How do you broach the topic? Do you discuss class issues? Study Economics? We'd love to hear!