Steve Metzger

Arundel High School

Each year, Steve Metzger’s students are hungrier for financial knowledge than his previous students. He knows that they’re seeing stories online about how much money people make, and they may be getting a distorted image or bad advice from those posts.

“When I teach entrepreneurship, we talk about how hard it is to make money,” says the Arundel High School Business Education teacher. “I want to open their eyes to the world and to money. Aside from English, personal finance is the second most important thing we can teach kids. Every one of them will have to know about personal finance when they graduate high school. While all their other subjects serve a purpose, what they know—or don’t know—about finance can hurt them or their families.”

Steve credits MCEE and the Stock Market Game for helping open their eyes.

“The game makes it real. They’re seeing the ramifications of their decisions in real time. It’s not hypothetical or watching an unrealistic video. They can understand how their decisions impact their bottom line—the balance in their portfolio—and they learn how it feels to make a bad decision.”

Ask what excites his students most about the game, and he responds without pausing.

“The competition. It’s fun. They like the gamification, not only competing against their classmates but also against kids from other schools. Not a lot of programs provide this opportunity, but MCEE does.”

Steve, who has been teaching for seven years, also credits MCEE with giving him invaluable tools and resources for teaching his students.

“I appreciate the free content and lesson ideas to supplement what our school district provides,” he says. “It sparks other ideas and helps me support other teachers. I’m now working with a first-year business teacher, and I can pass along everything from MCEE to her as a potential idea for her classroom.”
This year for the first time, students in Steve’s Introduction to Business class will submit creative poems about personal finance in MCEE’s annual Poetry Contest. He appreciates how the Contest gives his students a short-term goal and a fun project—“one and done,” as he quips.

In addition, a group of Steve’s students in Arundel’s Millionaire’s Club (the largest of the school’s 80+ student clubs) will be venturing into this spring’s Personal Finance Challenge. Steve is eager to see how this activity can be worked into future curriculum.

“I don't take credit for my students' success but it's rewarding and exciting to know that I helped spark an interest in finance. A lot of my former students are getting into finance as college majors. They have college internships in finance and are working in it professionally. And I know that my students are using the lessons learned in their everyday lives.”

“I’m very grateful to MCEE for this support and for giving students these opportunities.”