Activity: Introducing Students to U.S. Banking Culture

Victoria Natalie, Bunker Hill Community College, Chelsea, MA

Description of the Process

We began the unit by defining basic banking vocabulary (definitions can be found in Appendix 1, Glossary of Home-Buying and Money Management Terms). We then reviewed some basic math skills, such as percentages, decimals, and averages. The students role-played going to the bank to set up an account, and the discussion following the role-play was active and enlightening; students learned budgeting methods from each other.

Because their expenses almost always included “sending money home,” we took an informal in-class survey as to the percentage of their earned incomes that they sent to their native countries. The results were tallied from a total of 20 students. The overall amount of money sent home was 25.4 percent of the class’ total earned income. The following is the breakdown of the number of students that sent percentages of their income home: 3 students/5 percent, 6 students/10 percent, 3 students/15 percent, 1 student/20 percent, 1 student/30 percent, 4 students/50 percent, and 2 students/70 percent. The discussion that followed revealed that students were sending money to their native country mainly to support family still living there. In some cases that money was being used to buy land or houses in the student’s native country, and always, some of the money was being used to help the student’s family with everyday living expenses.

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