 The mission of the Georgia Council on Economic Education is to help teachers teach economics in the public and independent schools of Georgia. We're very blessed in Georgia that economics and personal finance can be found throughout the curriculum. Every grade level elementary, middle, and high school, including a required high school economics course. When it comes to strategies to teach economics, you're really only bound by your creativity and I suppose the time you have to put those lessons together. The Georgia Council on Economic Education gives you such a head start compared to other content areas that it's unbelievable the opportunities that you have just with their materials that they provide readily at workshops. The Georgia Council on Economic Education helps teachers teach economics by conducting workshops written specifically and created specifically for each grade level in the state of Georgia. Teachers generally come to a full day workshop where they learn some economic concepts. They participate in activities and they actually see and use lesson plans that have been created specifically for them that they can take back to their classroom the very next day and use with their students. I am so appreciative of the GCEE because I know that it's such a powerful organization because so many people, businesses and corporations and individuals invest in there because they know they're investing in my children. They were, I don't want to say just interesting to me, but they gave me so many ideas of how I could teach certain concepts in a way that might really engage my students so that I don't have to do a pure lecturing style because usually with this you put students to sleep but how I can teach in an engaging way that whenever something came up where I felt needs for improvement in my teaching, I signed up for another workshop. When we create any of our workshops we start with looking at the Georgia performance standards. Teachers are required to teach certain concepts throughout K-12 and it makes sense for us to deliver the concepts that teachers are expected to teach. If you come to a fourth grade workshop for instance, the economics we're going to be looking at is specific to the fourth grade GPS standards and I think this helps build teachers comfort level with what they're required to teach in the classroom and it allows them to work on new and creative ways to deliver economic concepts to make it more interesting for their students. We figure a typical middle or high school teacher teaches 200 students a year so you can extrapolate that pretty quickly. 10 years, 2,000 students, it's like compound interest. Once that teacher has been to a workshop, used our materials, year after year that impact is going to be felt in their classroom. The Georgia Council on Economic Education has made a huge difference on me as a teacher. When I first started teaching, I would get behind my podium and talk about something and I had a hard time maybe venturing out and doing a lot of stuff but if it had not been for them, I kind of hate to see what my class would be like because they have had an unbelievable influence on me as a teacher.