DiAnn Fernandez in her classroom

Students’ eyes don’t glaze over when they hear about diminishing marginal utility in DiAnn Fernandez’s high school economics class. She tells stories and presents activities that bring economic concepts to life.

She tells her class about the time when she was their age and her boyfriend took her and her “bratty little brother” out for hamburgers. Ms. Fernandez recalls, “My brother ordered three hamburgers, a milkshake and fries. I was so mad! Well, he ate the first burger, then the second and he wasn’t quite so hungry and said, ‘I’ll take home the third.’ I said, ‘No you won’t! You’ll eat it!’ That is the point of diminishing marginal utility. The more you have of a product, the less satisfied you are in getting it. And when you’re not satisfied with that product, there has to be an incentive given to get you interested again, like an advertising campaign or gimmick. In this case, I was the incentive!” To make concepts real, students are asked on tests to relate personal stories that illustrate economic principles.

Attending Texas Council on Economic Education (TCEE) workshops has enhanced
Ms. Fernandez’s propensity to tell stories and make learning fun. Texas is one of 25 states that requires an economics course for high school graduation, and TCEE helps spark enthusiasm in teachers and in classrooms about an ever-present, sometimes abstract aspect of life.

At a recent conference, Ms. Fernandez participated in a program called the Economics of Chocolate. The program showed teachers how to use chocolate as a tool to teach students about factors of production, including the relationships between raw resources, wages, prices, profit and taxes when the chocolate ultimately is sold as candy.

When Ms. Fernandez began teaching high school economics, she was determined to create a class students would enjoy. TCEE gave her the tools and camaraderie she needed. She says, “TCEE pays for substitute teachers so we can attend conferences. I get new ideas from the workshops and the other teachers and return to the classroom energized with activities that help students understand concepts and see how they work in everyday life.”

Ms. Fernandez says everything in life is about economics, and when she talks about scarcity, trade-off and opportunity cost, TCEE tools help her bring the topics close to home. “We don’t always talk about money,” she explains. “We talk about choices, and not just about choices in spending. I might ask my students, ‘How are you going to exchange your talents or your time? What will you get in return? What’s the trade-off?’” She applies the concepts directly to the students’ lives and asks them to consider those questions when deciding whether to attend college or get a job after they leave high school. Ms. Fernandez expands the concepts when she leads the students in a discussion about government expenditures on “guns or butter” and about the differences between market and command economies. She says, “They need to know there’s more than choice A. There’s choice B, C, and D—and each choice has opportunity and consequence.

“I want the students to leave my classes as independent thinkers. I want them to know and understand that they have something valuable to bring to the table to exchange. I want them to understand at the very least that their labor, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit comprise the human side of economics."

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