The Path to Financial Literacy: Empowering Students with Economic Knowledge

Unlock the door to financial literacy with our compelling conversation with Teresa Mungai, the Director of Education Services and Impact at the Arizona Council on Economic Education. Financial literacy has never been more essential for students navigating complex economic realities. April is Financial Literacy Month, bringing forth vital conversations about money management and economic choices that affect every aspect of life. Teresa's expertise shines as she delves into the significance of financial principles and how they shape the future of students in Arizona and beyond.

This episode explores the newly established Seal of Personal Finance, which recognizes students' dedication to understanding financial concepts. The six foundational economic principles that Teresa outlines not only include the concepts of choice and opportunity cost but also frame the decisions students make in their daily lives. Educators can engage students in meaningful discussions that extend beyond the classroom by connecting economics with civics and history.

Throughout the episode, we discuss exciting upcoming events hosted by the ACEE, designed to foster financial awareness and community involvement. Join our vibrant community and participate in this crucial dialogue about financial education. Listen in and discover actionable insights you can bring to your life or share with future generations. Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and join us as we equip students with the tools they need to thrive in today’s economic landscape.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Introduction
• 1:55 Celebrating Financial Literacy Month
• 7:30 Understanding the Seal of Personal Finance
• 15:50 The Six Economic Principles Explained
• 26:20 Applying Economics to Civics and History
• 37:00 Upcoming Events and Programs

Transcript

Liz: 0:51

Welcome back. Today. We're thrilled to welcome Teresa Mungai, the Director of Education Services and Impact at the Arizona Council on Economic Education. You will also hear us refer to it as ACEE. With over two decades of experience in education, teresa is a dedicated leader in advancing economic literacy across Arizona. She works closely with educators, developing resources, leading workshops and fostering partnerships that strengthen economic education in schools. Her expertise in curriculum development, program management and teacher training makes her an invaluable advocate for empowering both teachers and students with essential economic knowledge.

Liz: 1:32

I'm so excited to have her on the podcast. I could talk to her for hours but for your listening benefit we shortened it a little bit. Enjoy. Welcome back everyone. I am thrilled to have Teresa on the podcast. Way back in the day, when I was teaching eighth grade, the standards changed. I had to teach economics and it wasn't something I was super familiar with and it was actually my first time attending a professional development with the Council for Economic Education, and since then it has just completely changed my teaching in middle school. But then when I transitioned out of teaching, I got to hang out with Teresa more and it's just been fun to kind of combine civics and economics. So, teresa, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really, really appreciate it.

Teresa: 2:26

Well, thank you, Liz. I appreciate the opportunity.

Liz: 2:30

So the first thing I want to talk about. This is going to be coming out on March 31st, so April is Financial Literacy Month, and I love that. Can you tell me a little bit about that Kind of including the financial literacy seal that Arizona has?

Teresa: 2:47

Yeah, so we have a couple of big holidays for us in economics education. One is in October. October is Economic Education Month, and then April, which we have so much fun with with all the schools. April is Financial Literacy Month. So Financial Literacy Month came about in 2004 when Congress passed an act to create a National Financial Literacy Month, recognizing that financial literacy is so important to everyone. It's one of those skills that there's no way around it. Every single person is going to need it, no matter what your situation, no matter where you live. Knowing financial literacy and having that skill set to be financially stable and productive is a skill that everybody has. So we're so excited that Congress was able to pass that in 2004. And so, with the Arizona Council on Economic Education, we celebrate it by kind of jam-packing that month full of personal finance events, and so we'll talk a little bit more about those later.

Teresa: 3:58

In regards to the seal of personal finance. So, like you had stated in your story, in 2018, the Arizona Department of Education and the Academic Standards Department came together and recognized that the social studies standards were very out of date. Came together and recognized that the social study standards were very out of date. We had, you know, it was 2018, but yet we were still referencing people like Ted Turner as entrepreneurs. Our students didn't even know who Ted Turner was. So we wanted to make sure that we updated those academic standards in economics and personal finance to make sure that the kids really were getting what they would need to survive in a global society once they became adults. So, based on those new standards being passed in 2018, in 2019, the Arizona Board of Education actually followed that up with creating the seal of personal finance. So this is a high school diploma seal. So the kids actually earn this cool little sticker seal that goes on their high school diploma. It also gets posted on their transcripts as something they could boast about when they're applying to college.

Teresa: 5:10

So for the seal of personal finance, there's four categories that the students have to meet criteria for during their high school career. So this can't be something that they started in like junior high and finished in high school. It all has to be done in grades nine through 12. So there's four categories. One of them is completing a curriculum or personal finance program. Category two is completing a co-curricular or extracurricular activity that has to do with personal finance, which to a lot of people that sounds very foreign but I will explain what that is in a minute. Category three is that they have to complete a college or career readiness activity. And then category four is they have to take a college or career readiness activity. And then Category 4 is they have to take some kind of personal finance assessment.

Teresa: 5:59

So for the Arizona Council on Education, we are fortunate enough that we have had several programs that have been approved by the Department of Education to count towards these different categories. So for category one, for the curriculum, we actually have a non-proprietary at no cost curriculum to schools and school districts that is specifically for high school economics. So it's a full curriculum that teachers can access at no cost or a district can access at no cost that takes them through how to teach an entire 18-week economics course. So that meets their standards for Category 1. For Category 2, that's like that co-curricular or extracurricular. Acee, as we call it, actually has five different programs that we offer, again at no financial cost, for the most part to schools in that category. So we do run the stock market game for the state of Arizona that one does have a cost associated with it, although if teachers are working at a Title I school then they can actually apply for a scholarship and ACA will support their students participating in that program.

Teresa: 7:19

We also have a math program called Money Minutes. So if the high school can get their math teachers to support that personal finance using our Money Minutes program, the Money Minutes program ties those personal finance standards with the math standards and it goes all the way. Actually it starts in kindergarten but for this purpose it goes all the way up through high school geometry. So for three of their four years of math they can use the Money Minutes program to support that personal finance knowledge but linking it with those math standards that they already have to learn. We also have a program called Financial Fitness in Action that qualifies for this particular category and it's a budgeting simulation that we bring to the school. So we bring in community members to be volunteers and the kids get a paycheck and they have to go through and create their monthly budget based on the profile that they were given. And it's really fun. It's a way to get communities involved in the schools and their neighborhoods. But it also gives the kids a chance to see real-world pricing on things. You'd be surprised how many of them just their eyeballs pop out of their heads when they see how much daycare is. So we want to give them that real life simulation and so that program meets that need.

Teresa: 8:37

We also have a state competition every April Actually the qualifying rounds are starting in February and March and we have an Arizona Economics Challenge, which is a state competition on economic knowledge, and then we also have a state competition for personal finance knowledge and those are called the Arizona Economics Challenge and the Arizona Personal Finance Challenge. The high school winners of those two competitions move on to national competitions and I'm happy to say the past couple of years we have always had an Arizona team in the finals, so we're really excited about that, have always had an Arizona team in the finals, so we're really excited about that. Category three I will come back to. But category four is the assessment piece and right now Arizona Council on Economic Education does offer an online assessment. So teachers just have to have the students go in and take that personal finance challenge online assessment and it meets that criteria.

Teresa: 9:33

As far as categoryategory 3 with the career readiness, that is something that has to be done at the school level but we are always happy to support that endeavor in any way that we can. So we're really excited to have this seal of personal finance. It started in 2019, and we only had a few schools that applied for it. The last list that I saw we have, I would say, over 100 districts in the state that are participating now. So we're really excited about that progress and really excited that kids are wanting to do it and wanting to get that knowledge. I know many people my age, which I'm not going to say what that is, but many people we did not get that education when we were in school and a lot of our parents didn't tell us that either. So it's really exciting to see so many of our high school students participating in that program.

Liz: 10:27

I love that and I love that. You know the SEAL exists and ACEE has basically everything you need to be successful in order to get that, whether it's, you know, for the student, the individual or the schools. I am the same way. I will not age myself, but I remember taking economics in high school, but there was no personal finance, and I think that that is something I'm so glad that my child is going through school with this kind of thing. So when we talk about economics, I attended your presentation at the Arizona Council for History Educations conference last year and I loved it and I loved it. So can you. I want to talk about that. Can you talk about, like, what is economics? And in your presentation you talked about the six economic principles and I just I absolutely love that. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Teresa: 11:27

Sure.

Teresa: 11:27

So, like most people, when I say the word economics, they're like, oh my gosh, there's no way. You know, I've trained thousands of teachers all over Arizona, kindergarten through 12th grade and, believe me, the look that you get from a second grade teacher's face when you say, hey, there's economic standards you have to teach, their eyeballs pop out of their heads. So economics it's portrayed as a little scary. It's always not always because there are some other economics nerds like myself but it's usually the class that people are like oh my gosh, I have to take that class or I had to take that class. But it's not as scary as people think. So I will tell you, economics is not the study of the stock market, it's not the study of money, it's not international trade, it's not all these super complex things that people think economics is. Economics is simply the study of making choices. We all make choices and all those scary things that I mentioned. They do have choices built into them, is built into them, but that's all economics is. It's the study of human behavior, of making choices, and so, leading into that, we have our six economic principles, and ACE, for the last 50 years, since it was, since its inception in Arizona has always focused on our six economic principles and we start every presentation that we do with these six principles because one it really helps ease teachers that are not comfortable with economics, or at least they think they're not comfortable with economics, but it helps them to see that, oh, I already do these things, and so it really puts them at ease and it helps things make sense.

Teresa: 13:13

So with the six economic principles, number one is that people choose. We all make choices. Those of us that are adults, we make choices almost on a second to second basis all day long. And so you know, being a parent or being a teacher, whatever you do, you make choices all day long. So people make those choices, and that's number one. Number two is that all of those choices, they all impose some kind of cost.

Teresa: 13:43

In economics we talk about opportunity cost, opportunity cost. Is that next best alternative to the choice that we made? So with my high school students, I used to tell them you know and this is going to date me a little bit, but you know, if you had $20 and you were going to the store, you know, and you were debating between buying a t-shirt or a CD, you know which one would you choose, and so they choose one, but then the one that they didn't choose is their opportunity cost. So number two is no matter what choice you make, there's always a cost to it. You know, if you get up early on a Saturday morning to go yard sailing, you're choosing to do that. Your opportunity cost is probably sleeping in. So you know every choice that you make has some kind of opportunity cost associated with it.

Teresa: 14:32

Number three is that people respond to incentives in predictable ways, and any elementary teacher can tell you that this is true, because you can put dangle little incentives in front of kids and you know that they're going to do what you ask them to do. You know you hold up a candy bar and say, okay, the person that's the quietest is going to get this. They're all going to be quiet, right? We know that people respond to incentives in predictable ways. You jingle that carrot, they're going to follow it. And number four is that the rules of the game influence choices, and so with this one, we talk about how environment impacts the choices that you even have. And this is where a lot of the civics ties in, is that you know, if we live in a democratic society, we have a lot more choices that we're able to make, versus, maybe, somebody that lives in a communist society.

Teresa: 15:31

I always use the example of the ketchup aisle. So if you go to the grocery store in the United States, you usually see not a few types of ketchup, you see half an aisle of ketchup right, there's mayo chop, there's sriracha chop, there's like a billion different kinds of ketchup that we have the choice to buy. Now, if you were to go to a country that has a different economic system than the United States take like, maybe, venezuela, you know, if you think those of us that are older, the former Soviet Union you know they're not going to have that variety of catch-up that we do here, because our systems are different. We have different rules to the game, and so the example I always use with teachers is you know, in my classroom it was not okay to run across my classroom. If I was a PE teacher it might be a different story. So those institutions or those settings are creating those rules of the game and those rules influence the choices that we're able to make, right? You always hear kids say well, at home I'm allowed to do this, and at school they're not right. So, again, rules of the game. And this is why teaching economics can impact so much of your teaching and creating your expectations in your class so we don't hear that you know, at home I can do this and here I can't. It's OK, rules of the game Set your choices, and here you don't have that choice.

Teresa: 17:03

And then number five is that people gain when they trade voluntarily. Five is that people gain when they trade voluntarily. And so with this one, I always like to use the example of a candy bar. So you know, if my favorite candy bar is a Milky Way Dark, which it is, if somebody had an Almond Joy, there is no way I am trading them for that. Right, want no part of it, not a coconut fan. But now, if they had a Milky Way dark and I had an almond joy which I don't know why I would have one. But if I did, I would trade them in a heartbeat, right? People don't trade for things that they don't want or that's not going to do anything for them. And so that one is people gain when they trade voluntarily, and that explains a lot of international trade and a lot of civics too.

Teresa: 17:55

And then the last one, which I think is the one that we really need to hit home with, especially this younger generation. They're so instant gratification that they don't always understand rule number six, which is that choices can have future unintended consequences. They don't understand that some things don't happen immediately. You know, we and even as adults we are guilty. If we don't know something, the first thing we do is Google it. Google is a verb, not a noun anymore, right, and so we're starting to get that way too. But the younger generation most definitely, like I know I can go ask chat GPT this, I know I can Google this, there's so instant gratification. They don't understand that the choices they make now can impact them in the future.

Teresa: 18:46

One of the things that I think about is about five years ago I saw a statistic that said that one in every six 18 to 24-year-olds in the United States has already filed for bankruptcy. That baffles me. Baffles me Because if you think about those 18 to 24-year-olds, you know they probably were just blowing money. Oh, I'll just file bankruptcy. I'm fine when those kids I say kids because I'm older, but when those people hit the age where they want to buy a house, they want to start a family, they want to do all these things.

Teresa: 19:23

Even employers look at your credit scores. Now you know they look at that. Oh, they're going to. Oh, when you were 19, you filed for bankruptcy. I'm not sure you can be trusted, and so we really need to hit home with students that those consequences may not happen immediately, but they will happen, and so, with all of these, we kind of use this as a framework to teach economics, to teach personal finance. We have choices, they have costs. We want to respond to incentives appropriately, that there's definitely rules of the game that come into play. We can trade, but we should only trade when we are gaining something from it, and that our choices may not have an immediate consequence it may hit us down the road and so that you can take these six principles and teach just about anything through them, which is what I love to do when I do teacher trainees.

Liz: 20:18

Well, and I think teachers are already teaching this stuff, right? Like you said this is very much civics and economics is. You're teaching it every day we're just not putting a name to what you're doing and giving a little bit more of a format so that when students, you know, become college students and they're walking through the MU at ASU and somebody offers them a credit card, they already kind of have like no, I understand how this works. I understand you know interest rates and things like that, because I learned these things in high school.

Teresa: 20:51

Definitely, yes, and that's so important. I you know I cannot tell you how many teachers around my age that I have talked to. That be the first to admit. You know I actually went to NAU, sorry, but I went to go lumberjacks.

Teresa: 21:09

But you know, when I went to NAU, it was legal for credit card companies to come on campus and solicit to students, and I just remember that whole sidewalk leading up to the student union being lined with credit card companies and saying oh, you know, here's a free T-shirt if you sign up. Well, one of the things that we teach in economics is there's no such thing as a free lunch. So you know, that's exactly that principle, right. There is that, oh, is the t-shirt really free if they're giving me a credit card? And you know things like that. So it is.

Teresa: 21:42

It's really important to understand these principles, apply them to your life, but also, like you said, they're already doing it. Especially when I work with elementary teachers, because they're not so focused on the economics, I'll ask them okay, how many of you have a classroom management plan? And they all raise their hand. And if they don't, I get a little concerned. But they all do right, and so I'm like okay, then you already teach economics. You're teaching your students that if they make this choice, this is what happens to them. You're using that incentive program, and so they're already teaching it. And that's probably the funnest part of my job is seeing those light bulbs go off in teachers' heads going oh, this isn't scary to teach, and then I get to show them how to do it. So, but yes, using these six principles just really lays out the framework for teaching so many other things.

Liz: 22:40

I love that. So again, this is a civics podcast, yes, and you talked a little bit about it already. But how can we kind of apply these economic you know, decision making and these six principles to history and civics?

Teresa: 22:56

Yeah, so these are probably some of my favorite teacher workshops to do is when I get to it, because I was a history teacher as well as economics, but I come from I'm second generation social studies teacher, so the history gene runs through and through. But my favorite is to take these six principles and what we do is we put them in a grid and then, next to those principles, we have a question column and an answer column One. Creating questions, or having your students create questions, is a great critical thinking skill for them to learn, and that really plays into civics, because you know, we're all bombarded with information and we need to be able to decipher. You know, what do I really think about this? Is this, you know? Is this really what it is? Should I look into it more? But creating those questions is a really high critical thinking skill. So we start off with them creating questions for each of the six principles based on the topic that they're talking about, but then they have to try to find the answer. So looking at those resources and okay, so here's the question that I asked. Now let me go find the answer to that.

Teresa: 24:07

So some of the examples that we do, in fact, just on Holocaust Remembrance Day, I did a teacher workshop on applying these six principles to rescue efforts in the Holocaust. Those people definitely made choices and so you know, through reading stories about people that rescued others during the Holocaust, were able to break down these six. You know what did they choose, what was their opportunity cost when they made that choice, what were the rules of the game that they were playing within. And so you can take a lot of these historical events and have the students break them down based on these six economic principles and creating those questions and those answers based on whatever sources you're giving them. So I've done it. Where we've done the rescue efforts during the Holocaust, we have another one that we've done on the civil rights movement, specifically the Montgomery bus boycott. Ton of economics in that story, but there are unbelievable civic choices that were made during that time too, and so a lot of people don't think about it that way. So it really changes the thinking. Some of these are very emotional topics for kids to talk about, and not that the emotion isn't needed, but sometimes going through these six principles kind of removes that aspect so they're really able to think about the facts and the events of what happened. So we've done the Montgomery bus boycott. I've done revolutions you know the French revolution which are all civically tied as well because they're changes of government or they're big civil actions that have taken place. So we do that.

Teresa: 25:48

But as far as specifically with civics, I mean we make choices every day to be. You know, you choose to be civically involved or not, you choose to vote or not, you choose to participate in our democracy in different ways and again, those six principles are going to apply to that choice that you made. Another part of economics that we talk about when you get into the high school level is things that decide supply and demand. Right, and if you think about those things that affect supply and demand, especially demand, you know you have to talk about propaganda. You have to talk about advertising and you know, watching these elections we actually did a workshop on the economics of elections back before the election happened and you know that propaganda, those advertisements, they influence your choices and we talk about what influences your choices.

Teresa: 26:46

And so, within that whole political arena of getting people civically engaged, providing information, acting on the information that you have, those are all choices that people have to make, and so any of those societal issues that come up, societal choices on how issues are dealt with. You know you can track through different presidential or gubernatorial terms in office how different issues are dealt with and how different choices were made. So maybe this candidate would make this choice on this issue, while this candidate would do a different choice, and then what are the opportunity costs of both of those decisions? And so you really can work those six principles into just about everything. But it really makes sense when you're talking about historical and civic actions that have taken place throughout history or even currently within our society.

Liz: 27:49

You're talking about supply and demand. I'm thinking about, like, the price of eggs right now. Right, and all of the factors that are influencing the price of eggs and that like these are. This is why I love civics and economics is because it literally happens all the time. These are not just little, you know pockets of of time. It is reading something and asking yourself these questions like is this advertising, is this propaganda? You know what really is affecting the supply. What if I make this choice? What are some unintended consequences? Like again, we do this all the time but we don't stop and think, like through each question because we're so used to doing it. So if students practice this in elementary school and then they get a little bit more practice in junior high and high school, it becomes something that's so second nature that you know economics and civics are just built into our society.

Teresa: 28:48

Absolutely. We do a program called. One of my fun things to do is we run a program called Econ Reads and it's for kindergarten. Through third grade classrooms. We have volunteers come in and read books that I pick to the class and then they do a hands-on economics activity that ties into the story that they were read, ties into the story that they were read. So we were actually at a school yesterday and the second graders were doing a product.

Teresa: 29:17

The book that they read was called Tia Isa Wants a Car, and it's about. It's about it's told from the viewpoint of Denise, who's a young girl, and her aunt is desperately trying to save up money to buy her own car, her first own car. And so we have the students do an activity where they and these are second graders, second graders, they're like seven and eight years old they had to determine, you know, what types of things would be short-term savings goals versus long-term savings goals, and so you know they had to categorize these things like but what's a bike? Is a bike a short-term or a long-term savings goal? And depending on the kid, you're going to get different answers, but it really helps. You know, just learning to save, or knowing that saving is important, makes such a big difference in kids' lives, and then it can also impact, like you said about the eggs, like you know, right now some of them might think that saving up for having more eggs and you know, come home from the grocery store with them is a priority. And so, you know, looking at it through those current events I know that one of the workshops that we do a lot too is, you know, using current events to teach economics, and that's all over the place right now, because, you're right, you know there's events to teach economics, and that's all over the place right now, because, you're right, you know there's choices that are being made, and whether it's the sellers trying to increase the cost to take advantage of the situation, or if it's something out of their hands like, you know, the avian bird flu that's going around, or whether it's a policy choice that somebody made within our Congress or within our government, all of those things are going to impact the end user and the price of eggs right now, and we don't always know which one of those things it is.

Teresa: 31:05

We just know that we have to make our own choice. If I know my groceries are going to cost me more at the end of the month because you know items X, y and Z cost more. Now then I have to make some choices, like maybe my I don't need to go to Starbucks one day so that I can get an extra you know dozen eggs, or something like that. But every choice impacts another choice, and that's definitely embedded in our civic choices as well.

Liz: 31:36

So I know ACE does so much and I love that you do an economics read program for the littles because that's so impactful. What else is coming up for Arizona Council for Economic Education?

Teresa: 31:51

So April is probably one of our busiest months because it is Financial Literacy Month. We really try to pack in as much as we can to get the word out that it is Financial Literacy Month and throw in as much personal finance events as we can. So we are actually very excited. On April 5th we have and this is open for registration right now on April 5th we have the Director of Education from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. He is coming out to do a full-day workshop on world history and economics and it's all lessons from a book that was published by the National Council on Economic Education. So we're really, really excited about that. It is being held at the Arizona Heritage Center. So it is $20 to register for Arizona educators. It's $20 to register. You get a tour of the museum, you get Dr Andrew Hill from the Philadelphia Fed all day long and then you also get lunch and breakfast and then at the end of the day all the teachers that came from Maricopa County actually get their $20 back. If they came from outside Maricopa County, we actually provide a $40 travel stipend. So they actually make $20 by coming. So we're super excited about that opportunity. Dr Hill is absolutely amazing. He's an amazing presenter and just overall person, so we're very excited to have him coming out.

Teresa: 33:25

And then on April 17th we've done this, and then COVID kind of threw us for a loop, but ACE and the Arizona Geographic Alliance are co-hosting an elementary teacher workshop at the Idea Museum in Mesa, and so that one we're very excited because they just spent nine months renovating their entire museum and we got to go see it the other day and it's fabulous. But we are doing an evening workshop, so it's from five to seven on April 17th. Teachers will get some geography lessons tied to the exhibit, they'll get some economics lessons tied to the exhibit, they also get dinner and then they get a tour of the newly renovated museum and get to play with a bunch of stuff. So we're really excited about those two in-person workshops. And then we also have an entrepreneurship program too, and so we have two webinars in April. One is discovering how to create theme parks, so the entrepreneurship of developing a theme park, and that is for K-12, and that one's on April 8th. And then we also have another entrepreneurship webinar for secondary teachers, so 7th through 12th grade, on the power of productivity, and that one is April 22nd and then one of the other events that we do because, as we talked about before, it's good for the kids to learn it at school, but those family conversations also need to happen.

Teresa: 35:00

So twice a year the Arizona Council on Economic Education hosts a family night at a Title I elementary school here in Arizona. So our one for April is going to be at Luke Elementary, but this one we're partnering with Purple Star Schools program, which is for military families, and so it'll be military families only for a family night, and so we feed them dinner, we do have them do family personal finance activities together as a family unit, and then we also have a section of it where the kids do grade level lesson activities while the parents go off to a parent session on their chosen topic, and so it's a really fun evening. But that is only for military families in the West Valley, mainly Luke Air Force Base. But we're really excited to be partnering with the Purple Star Schools on that program. And then we do have, like I said, we have our Econ Reads program for the littles and we have three of those scheduled in April.

Teresa: 36:05

So we'll be down in Casa Grande and I can say Casa Grande because I'm from there instead of saying Casa Grande, and then we have one in Tucson, and then we also have one up here in the Madison Elementary School District in Phoenix. So it's going to be a very busy month. And also in April is our statewide challenges for our high school and junior high teams. So it's going to be a packed month. But you can go to our website, which is azaconorg. So, azaconorg, we have lots of programs coming up. We even hold them over the summer while teachers aren't working, but we're always busy people, so there's always more to come. But if you go to our website, you can see all of our great opportunities that are coming up.

Liz: 36:55

I love that and we will link that in our show notes too. Teresa, thank you so much for giving us your time, all of this expertise. I mean, I feel like I was familiar with ACE before, but you have so many programs that I was not aware of. So thank you so much for what you do for economics, for what you do for civics too, because it does tie in, and for being on the podcast. We really appreciate it.

Teresa: 37:20

Well, thank you, liz. It's so good to see you again. You know we've had a longstanding relationship on and off, so it was a pleasure to get to talk to you and you know people can always reach out to me if they have any questions as well, and I think you're going to link those that email and stuff. So thank you so much. I appreciate being able to have the opportunity.