October 30, 2017 Reading Time: 2 minutes

It is very satisfying to report that AIER’s Summer Fellowship alumnae are collaborating with the institute on various projects. As we reported in the recent volume of The Harwood Economic Review, Dr. Elena Zee, a 1993 AIER summer fellow, is president and CEO of the Arizona Council on Economic Education. She directs the council’s educational activities and was excited to learn about our Teach-the-Teachers Initiative when AIER presented the results of the program at the Economics Teaching Conference.

This year, we agreed to bring AIER’s Teach-the-Teachers Initiative to Phoenix, Ariz., on June 19–21, 2018. We will collaborate with the ACEE and deliver the program at the Arizona Department of Education campus. Usually up to 50 teachers participate in the annual Economics Boot Camp as they prepare for the Arizona Educator Proficiency Assessments, the statewide evaluation test. AIER will bring to the teachers its 85 years’ expertise in the study of money, inflation, and business cycles, as well as property rights and monetary and fiscal policies.

AIER continues to pursue the educational ideas of our founder, E.C. Harwood, who believed that educating the educators advances the institute’s mission. It is rewarding to see that Elena Zee directs the ACEE, which “envisions a world where all school-aged children are empowered through economic and personal financial literacy to make informed and rational choices throughout their lives as consumers, savers and investors, workers, entrepreneurs, citizens, and participants in a global economy.” This mission aligns well with the Teach-the-Teachers Initiative’s goal to provide school teachers of various disciplines with an understanding of economic concepts, making them more productive in using effective curricula and pedagogy. Through teachers we reach students, helping them develop critical thinking, informational text analysis, real-world applications, and other skills transferable to various fields of study and the workplace.

As we prepare for the summer 2018 cycle of teach-the-teachers workshops, our collaboration with the Arizona Council on Economic Education holds a special place. We thank Elena Zee for hosting us and look forward to meeting teachers in Phoenix in June.

 

Picture (from left to right): Natalia Smirnova (AIER), Elena Zee (ACEE), and Michelle Ryan (AIER) at the 56th Annual Financial Literacy & Economic Education Conference of the Council for Economic Education, Brooklyn, N.Y., October 6, 2017.

 

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Natalia Smirnova, PhD

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