Real World Shocker

As part of an incentive program in my clasroom, my students earn "Pittman Bucks." I have made a money template with my picture on it and I have denominations of $1, $5, $10, and $50. At the beginning of the year I explain to the students that coming to school is their job and therefore they should be paid for it! I give them a weekly "pay check" of $50 and they earn money for various other activities as well. They can also lose the money for breaking rules or not doing all of their assigned work for the week. I have also thrown in a monthly "bill" of rent in the amount of $60. Boy do they love that! At the end of the nine weeks they have the opportunity to buy things in an auction. Well, today I broke the bad news to them. I informed them that as good American citizens it is their duty to pay taxes. As you can imagine, they were not to pleased! (Don't feel too badly for them though, it's only a 10% tax.) They then had to calculate and pay me their tax money. Each student has a money envelope and on the outside they have a basic check registry that they have to use to keep track of what they earn, lose and spend. Shockingly enough, most of them have great difficulty maintaining an accurate balance. All of this falls into SOL 6.8, consumer applications, not to mention the basic life skill of balancing a checkbook.