Enticing Teenagers

Capitola VillageWhenever I mention that I’m designing a course for teenagers on how to manage their money, the adults always react with enthusiasm. “That would be a great course!” “I wish I’d had a class like that when I was a teenager!”

But when I mentioned it to my daughter (a junior in high school), she wrinkled her nose. At this point, managing her money isn’t relevant to her (always an early test when doing instructional design). She doesn’t bring in money, nor does she spend much money.

How do you make a class on managing your money exciting to such a teenager?

First of all, change the name. Maybe call it “How much money do you have?”, or “How much money can you spend?” My daughter’s eyes lit up when I mentioned shopping. Maybe I should call the class “Shopping”. I can envision our first session, a field trip, me and four students window shopping in Capitola Village.

Of course, this presupposes that each student has money and some sort of bank account: add this to the conditions of the course objectives.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I have the main learning objectives, but I need to either break them down or do a skills hierarchy, or possibly fill out a final student performance worksheet (a favorite job aid I picked up at Practical Management, Inc.’s Instructional Design workshop).

Has this ever happened to you, you start a project and immediately your mind shoots off in a spiderweb of directions? Time to reel it in….