Your Weekend Reading

The "may each of you teach a student like this at some point in your career" edition.

Death Star Costs

So are you finally done with the EOCT's? What a long slog that was huh? On the one hand you are most likely thrilled that you prepared your students well for the test and they all spent the last few days making you proud. On the other hand you are now faced with the fact that you will be stuck in a room with 25+ students five or six times a day for the next few weeks and they know they are "done" with econ. Ah yes, what to do now?

Before you start that big end-of-year project or economics film fest why not have a little fun with econ? Share this with your students and use it as a way to start a discussion about other movies that can be examined to explore the economic decision making process.

I bet you could spend plenty of time talking about the economic costs and benefits of Shrek's decision to drink the magic potion in Shrek 2. Or how about a thorough examination of the true financial costs absorbed by the Bad News Bears baseball team in the 1977 classic "Bad News Bears in Breaking Training." Driving that van from California to Houston could not have been cheap. I bet that thing only got about 17 miles to the gallon, maybe even less when Kelly Leak was behind the wheel.

Big King Copper

Why didn't I invest heavily in copper a few years back? Prices up 181 percent since 2009. Use this article on a slow day or use it as a "ticket out the door." Ask your students to read it and then tell you in 50,000 words or less of all the economic concepts found within.

Summer Workshops

If you are a teacher in Georgia you probably have one thing, and one thing only, on your mind right now....summer vacation. How many days left? I bet each of you know to the exact minute how much time you have left until that glorious bell rings to let the kids out for summer.

So what are your plans for summer anyway? Maybe some time here? Maybe do some of this? Oh, how I miss having summer off. Perhaps the sweetest perk of all.

If you are looking to learn more econ to better prepare yourself to teach the new crop of students you will see in early August look no further than these three Georgia Council summer workshop offerings....AP Macroeconomics (Gwinnett County), AP Microeconomics (Gwinnett County), International Economics for high school teachers (Berry College).

Visit www.gcee.org for details.

Your Weekend Reading

The "Old School Cuba" edition.

Sell Your Classroom

I do enjoy Morgan Spurlock. Any man that can eat nothing but McDonald's for a month is tops in my book. Back in the day when I was still teaching I often thought about getting some random company to "sponsor" my classroom. I always imagined a humongous billboard type sticker covering the entire front wall of my class. The kids would have looked at it all day and then they would have rushed out to buy that product. I was even willing to go so far as to put "This Micro test brought to you by the good people at Gynormo Corp" or something like that on my tests. Alas, I did not make it happen and I now have to live with that the rest of my life. Sigh.

Take a peak at another excellent TED video and learn more about how many businesses operate.

Your Weekend Reading

The "this is a pretty cool interactive graphic" that some of my students just might find interesting edition.

SMG Champions

Let's all give a huge-shout out to Oliver Elementary School for bringing home the gold in the 2011 Spring Stock Market Game competition! With a portfolio total of $162,945.20 Oliver Elementary takes home another "first place in the state" award.

Rounding out the top five in the state were, Parkview High, Mt. Zion High, Chattooga High and another team from Parkview High.

Congratulations to every team that participated in the 2011 competition. We look forward to seeing the winning teams at the annual Stock Market Game luncheon in early May.

True That

Mankiw nails it in this NY Times piece.