Some Financial Literacy Resources for ESL Teachers

In a classroom that is full of students from different countries, social, economic, and educational backgrounds, it is quite probable that at least a handful of them do not have the background knowledge necessary to function successfully in today's American banking and financial system.

Unfamiliarity with currency, money scams, identity theft, how to use debit cards, the importance of balancing a checkbook, how to open a checking account, and lots of other similar skills are probably beyond the reach of these students. When a student is pre-literate or illiterate, this compounds the difficulties of knowing how to budget the family's finances to ensure all bills are paid on time, and what to do with a seemingly meaningless piece of paper with numbers on it that the student receives from his or her employer at the end of the week.

Although many immigrants come to the United States with at least some knowledge of financial institutions and how to navigate them, many do not. Specifically, refugees generally face the most difficult of times among the population of immigrants in figuring out how to work the banking and financial systems to their own benefit.

For those who work with immigrants and refugees on a regular basis, including, English as a second language teachers, volunteers, tutors, etc., here are a few resources to help you design lessons and demonstrations to help your clients, students, and friends become more familiar with the basics of their finances in the United States.

http://www.cal.org/co/email_discussion/Attachments/RefugeeWorks_Financial_Literacy_Resource_Guide.pdf-This document is published by Refugee Works, the National Center for Refugee Employment and Self-Sufficiency. It is a list of useful websites devoted to financial literacy in general and among certain populations.

http://www.cal.org/co/email_discussion/Attachments/USCRI-Financial_literacy_curriculum-Nov2009.pdf-This document contains twelve comprehensive lessons about financial literacy for immigrants and refugees. It is published by the U.S. Committee for Refugee and Immigrants (www.refugees.org). It provides general topic information, but it does not provide activities to include in a lesson plan, necessarily. There are good resources for students to check out online at the end of each lesson. Teachers, tutors, and volunteers will likely need to peruse the Internet for some ideas of how to apply these lessons to the lives of their students for maximum impact.

http://www.refugees.org/article.aspx?id=1971-This website is also on the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants web page. It is a list of a few pamphlets put together with help from the Citi Foundation on banking and finance topics. They are translated into a few different languages and contain useful lists of vocabulary for each topic.

http://www.cal.org/co/domestic/toolkit/money/index.html-This site is published by the Cultural Orientation Resource Center, and it contains two Power Point presentations about money management. Be sure to check out their publications section for more information about subject-specific cultural orientation resources for immigrants and refugees. Many of their resources are available in different languages, too.

Using these resources can be of great value to newcomers to the United States. They help to answer a lot of questions that they may have about navigating the complicated system of banking, loans, investing, saving, sending remittances home, etc.