Aaron Standish joined the NGPF team last month as our first-ever Partnerships & Adoption Manager for the Southeast region. Aaron brings a wealth of passion and expertise to this role in which he will help states and districts implement Personal Finance courses. Read Aaron's story.

"I have to teach WHAT?!" 

My journey in personal finance education began like many other teachers. Involuntarily.

Showing up for a new school year and finding out that ‘and Financial Literacy’ was tacked on to an already loaded semester-long Economics course. I knew little about what ‘and Financial Literacy’ even meant.

Personal finance topics were not covered in any of my teacher preparation programs or required for my certification. My own personal finances as a young teacher were not exactly the model of how to effectively, or even competently, manage money.

And, so, I did what every teacher learns how to do very quickly on the job. I faked it. I showed videos that a local financial institution provided ‘free’ to my school. I learned as the students learned. 

I was hooked immediately.

I started devouring personal finance books. Why had I not been taught this before?

I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi completely altered my own relationship with money and made personal finance feel accessible, even to a young teacher without many means.

I joined the Bogleheads forum and learned the power of simplicity and tuning out the noise.

I earned my Master’s Degree in Economics and Entrepreneurship (shout out University of Delaware!) as I sought to soak up more and more information, and, most importantly, began to transform my own personal finances.

And then, I wanted to share it.

I started an adult personal finance course at night in my community. I left the classroom after 13 years to become the K-12 Financial Literacy Program Planner for the School District of Palm Beach County (FL), responsible for implementing all personal finance programming for the district’s 185,000+ students each year.

For over 10 years, I trained many teachers (often using NGPF resources) on not just best practices for implementing personal finance content in their own classrooms, but on best practices for managing their own personal finances. 

An unintended benefit of requiring personal finance for students is that the educators tasked with teaching this content often improve their own personal finances as well (many who were involuntarily told, much like myself).

Specialized training designed for teachers has been proven to effectively equip teachers with the knowledge they need to teach a personal finance course AND also improve their own behaviors and attitudes toward money.

And who does specialized personal finance training for teachers better than Next Gen Personal Finance? Nobody.

Now, I consider myself beyond fortunate to join the NGPF team.

I get to help spread and support best-in-class and current personal finance curriculum; scores of high quality PD options; and advocacy that has driven transformational results to districts and states across the country. All in the hopes that every student leaves our schools financially capable, and every teacher feels empowered and capable to teach those students.

"I get to do WHAT!?"

Editor's note: Aaron was a recent guest on the Teach and Retire Rich podcast with Dan Otter and Scott Dauenhauer of 403bwise.org. Listen to the episode here.

About the Author

Aaron Standish

Aaron is the new Partnerships & Adoption Manager for the Southeast region of the U.S. He previously worked for 22 years at the Palm Beach County School District–the 10th largest in the country. He started his career as a Social Studies teacher and then transitioned to a role as the district's Financial Literacy Program Planner. Aaron was also a key member of Florida's financial literacy working group, responsible for creating the new standards and new required courses. No stranger to NGPF, Aaron has been using the NGPF curriculum for years and is an NGPF Distinguished Educator.

More posts by Aaron