article written by Cori Burcham
Like many educators earning their Master of Arts in Economics and Entrepreneurship for Educators (MAEEE) at the University of Delaware, Linda Bacon and Kylee Holliday were motivated to strengthen their students’ comprehension of economics, personal finance and entrepreneurship. They did not realize their impact would extend beyond the classroom.
The MAEEE degree program, offered since 1981 by UD’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, continues to reach K-12 teachers across the globe.
Driven by a passion for personal finance, Bacon and Holliday became change-makers in their schools and communities by finding innovative ways to incorporate financial education into their curriculum — preparing students academically and to meet life’s challenges.
Building confidence in financial decisions
In 2018, Bacon, a 2023 MAEEE graduate and elementary teacher in the Christina School District, saw firsthand how financial education programs impacted her classroom after decades of teaching.
“The long-term benefit of introducing personal finance education early is that it helps children develop healthy money habits and build confidence in making financial decisions — skills that carry into adulthood,” Bacon said.
She noted students are more engaged when financial content is gamified or correlated to real life.
Through MAEEE, Bacon received a grant to attend the Council for Economic Education’s 2022 Financial Literacy and Economic Education Conference. After seeing a presentation on family financial fun nights, an after-school event offering interactive financial literacy activities for families, she became inspired to organize an event for her fourth graders at West Park Place Elementary School in Newark. That event was successfully cohosted by Bacon and UD’s Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship (CEEE) only two months later, reaching 24 families.
The aim of the night was to open a dialogue between parents and children about important personal finance topics, such as budgeting, saving and financial decision-making.
“It’s essential to include the whole family in conversations about money, especially early on, since children often look to their parents for financial guidance,” Bacon said.
According to Bacon, parents often feel unprepared for these conversations. The activities helped resolve this issue, offering parents accessible examples to encourage financial discussions at home. One family even applied what they learned from an M&M budgeting activity, which has families financially plan for the expense of a new pet with a budget of two fun-sized packs of M&Ms, to their real-life plans to adopt a furry friend.
Teaching lifelong financial literacy skills
Holliday, a social studies teacher at Alexis I. duPont High School in Greenville, first noticed a gap in her school’s personal finance education during her time as an MAEEE student. Holliday, who earned her MAEEE degree in 2021, was inspired to change her curriculum after learning that her peers from other states taught more financial literacy. Implementing the tools she learned at MAEEE, she decided to build a financial literacy unit into her ninth-grade economics course.
“I created a four-week unit that included all four of the Delaware Financial Literacy standards … I realized that it simply wasn’t enough. One four-week unit embedded into a course is not adequate to teach students the lifelong skills they will need to become productive citizens,” Holliday said.
Holliday realized a year-long course was a better solution. The class centers on building foundational skills that prepare students to be financially responsible adults. By modeling assignments on real-world financial decision-making, she hopes to give her students a head start in life — a result she’s already seen in action.
“I can distinctly remember seeing a former student a year after they graduated. They made it a point to tell me they had a full-time job working at a bank, had started their own clothing brand, and signed a lease on a new apartment. They said that taking my class was the best decision they made. Hearing that makes it all worth it,” said Holliday.
Expanding the reach of financial literacy
Beyond their classrooms, Bacon and Holliday’s efforts paved the way for change in their communities. After the success of Bacon’s family financial fun night, she received requests from educators in the Christina School District to help plan a financial literacy night.
“Other schools saw the value in hosting such an event for their families, and it was great to see it expand to other schools,” Bacon said. In the four years since she introduced her financial literacy course, Holliday trained teachers in financial education throughout the Red Clay School District, which led to new financial literacy classes at John Dickinson School and Thomas McKean High School.
Both alumnae shared their work at the 2025 CEEE Personal Finance and Economic Education Conference held at the FinTech Innovation Hub in early July. Sponsored by the Delaware Council on Economic Education with generous support from Robinhood, and YourMoney101, the conference invited local teachers and MAEEE cohorts from across the country to attend four concurrent sessions on elementary or secondary school education.
Now in its seventh year, the conference has garnered a reputation as a hub for educators across all grade levels to learn new strategies that engage their students in personal finance and economics and return to their schools inspired to make a difference.
Geared toward an elementary audience, Bacon’s session demonstrated hands-on activities teachers could use for their own financial literacy nights. A standout favorite, the activity Chips and Pretzels had teachers taste-test samples of snacks to guess which one was generic or name-brand. After voting for their favorite, the game led to a discussion on cost and value. To assist organizers, Bacon also provided toolkits developed by CEEE staff detailing each activity.
For secondary school teachers, Holliday’s session featured a 60-minute budgeting lesson that has students select their prospective career paths, assess the reality of adult costs and reflect on how their choices impact their lifestyle. Guided by the ideology that it’s her duty as an MAEEE graduate to pass on her training and impact as many educators as possible, Holliday’s presentation brought her one step closer to achieving her professional goal.
“My state has a serious lack of financial literacy. I felt that if I were able to find a good lesson on budgeting, that it would be one way to bridge the gap,” said Sam Sloan, an economics teacher at Pocahontas High School in Arkansas.
Arkansas consistently ranks in the bottom percentile for financial literacy, and Sloan attended the conference to gain more resources for his students.
“I plan on using the budgeting activity in my classroom in the upcoming year,” he said.