This article was written by Cori Burcham.
At 13, Erin Boettcher — now a first-grade teacher at Brader Elementary School in Newark with 24 years of teaching experience — noticed the strong community the University of Delaware’s Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship (CEEE) had created for educators. At the annual CEEE Personal Finance and Economic Education Conference, Boettcher shared how she first became acquainted with the center through her father, a high school economics teacher and 1993 graduate of the UD’s master of arts in economics and entrepreneurship for educators (MAEEE) program.
“My dad was in the original master’s program and, as a local, he would oftentimes have the participants over since we lived right in Newark three miles off campus,” said Boettcher, referring to a photo of herself and her father at a backyard picnic he hosted for fellow MAEEE graduates. “What I learned really young is that the people are exceptional. People are what drive all of the good things happening in the world of economics and financial literacy.”
What Boettcher observed is at the heart of the MAEEE community. K-12 educators arrive eager to improve economics and financial literacy education for their students, but along the way, they become economic education leaders beyond their classrooms. The program uses a multiplier model first envisioned by CEEE founder James O’Neill, helping educators build confidence and expertise they can share with other teachers. As part of a larger network of MAEEE graduates, educators today — including Boettcher — continue that ripple effect by developing curriculum and training fellow educators.
Educators helping educators
When she became a teacher nine years later, Boettcher joined the CEEE community by attending professional development events and learning hands-on economics and financial literacy lessons she could incorporate into her classroom. When she introduced experiential lessons such as Mini-Society, a simulation in which students design their own market system, Boettcher noticed a significant shift among students who often struggled in traditional classroom settings.
“All students gain from the experience of Mini-Society, but none more than the students who typically struggle in school, often those who work harder than anyone else in the class but don’t get the highest test scores. … Hard work, determination, the ability to pivot, rethink your idea and recover from setbacks — those are all things Mini-Society thrives on. My students with disabilities or any academic, social or emotional challenges shined every single time,” Boettcher said.
After witnessing Mini-Society’s impact, Boettcher became motivated to make the program more accessible to elementary teachers — a goal she pursued when she enrolled in the MAEEE program. For her implementation project, Boettcher developed a curriculum that unpacked economics concepts for elementary teachers, helping them become more comfortable with the subject. One lesson allowed educators to experience Mini-Society as students, a workshop she continues to offer to give teachers the confidence to introduce the program in their classrooms.
After helping local teachers, Boettcher hopes to expand her impact statewide by gaining the support of school administrators.
“I want school leaders to see how economics and financial literacy level the playing field and offer a seat at the table for all students to be active learners and participants. The impact cannot be measured in test scores, numbers and data, but that doesn’t make it any less important for our students. It’s going to take a big voice to help them understand that, and that’s the voice I’d like to find,” said Boettcher, who hopes the dialogue will create more opportunities for economics and financial literacy in Delaware’s elementary classrooms.
Elizabeth Bear, a 2025 MAEEE graduate and economics teacher at Cab Calloway School of the Arts in Wilmington, enrolled in the program to strengthen the rigor of her ninth-grade curriculum. She was inspired to apply after she began teaching a full civics and economics course six years ago.
“I was spending an entire semester on economics, and I wanted to make sure I was doing right by the students and teaching them strong content. That pushed me to apply to the MAEEE, and it was through that program I gained confidence in my economics knowledge,” Bear said.
For her MAEEE implementation project, Bear focused on gaining a deeper understanding of Delaware’s economics teaching standards. She reviewed clarification documents outlining the state’s microeconomic and macroeconomic benchmarks to determine which concepts should be taught at each grade level.
“That familiarity with the Delaware standards — combined with the strong content knowledge from the MAEEE classes — allowed me to push the content rigor in my ninth-grade economics class, as I knew what base knowledge students had before and what new concepts I should guide them toward,” Bear said.
After seeing the impact on her own instruction, Bear shared her work on standards alignment with other educators. She first led professional development sessions for middle and high school economics teachers in the Red Clay Consolidated School District. She was later asked to present her findings statewide and collaborated with fifth-grade teacher Erica Varites of Cooke Elementary School on a training session at the Social Studies Coalition of Delaware Conference for elementary and secondary school teachers.
“It was a great experience to work with such a talented teacher at the elementary level and work together to tailor the standards alignment to a wider audience,” said Bear, who continues to share classroom best practices with fellow educators through professional development and collaboration.
Continuing the multiplier effect
With every new MAEEE cohort, graduates join a network of educators working to strengthen economics and financial education. One of those candidates is Patrick Kiley, a high school economics and history teacher at Marlborough High School in Massachusetts. Even with 33 years of classroom experience, Kiley said becoming a student again broadened his perspective as an educator.
As a student of CEEE adjunct professor Andrew Hill, Kiley learned teaching techniques he plans to bring into his own classroom, including retrieval practice. Kiley said Hill often opened class with low-stakes practice problems designed to reveal gaps in students’ learning.
“Experiencing this practice in the role of a student has convinced me of its value for my own students. … I’ll be using this strategy to improve learning outcomes for [them] as it made a real impact on my ability to understand my own learning,” Kiley said.
After completing his second summer in the program, Kiley has one final requirement: the second year of his implementation plan. Drawing on his background as a history teacher, Kiley’s project brings economics lessons and activities into U.S. history, world history and psychology courses. He aims to help teachers in other disciplines incorporate economics topics into their lessons, making the subject more accessible to teachers and students. His project includes behavioral economics experiments that demonstrate the consequences of decision-making for psychology courses, as well as money and banking simulations that highlight challenges in the early American economy for history classes.
While Kiley initially joined the MAEEE program to expand his career options in teaching or educational programming, it opened doors he had not anticipated.
“I had never really considered myself to be someone who might offer professional development and model lessons to other teachers, but my involvement in this project has changed that viewpoint. I’ve learned that I do have an expertise that can be of value to other teachers, and I hope after graduation I can continue to assist those who might want my support,” Kiley said.