Crash Course in Financial Planning: Precalculus Students Apply Math to Real-World Situations in New Project

The goal of the project was for students, as “financial planners,” to apply their knowledge of exponential growth and decay to real-world situations presented by “clients,” played by professional community members. 

Harder and Carroll are both proponents of project-based learning, especially as a way to help math class feel authentic for students who might not naturally connect with the material. “The longer I’ve been teaching, the more I love working with the kids who have found math to be more challenging,” Harder said. “And one of the reasons, I think, that math has been harder or less interesting for some kids is that it just doesn’t make sense why they have to do it.”

Projects that connect material to real-world applications can help students feel more invested—a notion Harder and Carroll’s students confirmed in their reaction to this new project. Jalen Morris ’27, one of Harder’s students, put it simply: “Learning math, sometimes you’re just thinking in your head, ‘How would this apply to real life?’ Having a project that connects it to real life makes math more fun and engaging.”

Harder began designing the financial planning project back in fall of 2024, when she took a professional development course on project-based learning. “I had this idea of having the students be financial planners and having to become experts in things that they’re going to need to use, and I really tried to think about what might be most useful for them to know by age 18,” she said. 

The topics she landed on for the project were using credit cards, paying for college, saving for retirement, and financing a car purchase. Harder specifically designed the project to be larger-scale than the projects she usually includes in her classes. As she put it, the project was “big enough that you are really delving into the issue, and small enough that it could be done in three weeks.”

The financial planners, working in pairs, held initial meetings with their clients in which each client presented a real-world situation prepared by Harder. One client was a parent seeking advice on which credit card his college-bound son should get, another was a young woman who needed help setting up her retirement savings, and so on. After the initial meeting, the financial planners conducted research, created dynamic spreadsheets using formulas, and prepared a presentation on their findings, which they shared in a final meeting with their client. In addition to researching their own client’s situation, students learned about each other’s topics through observing each other’s presentations. 

Lila Stern ’27 was one of the financial planners tasked with helping a young woman set up her retirement savings plan. “I knew these things existed—a retirement fund, credit cards—but I didn’t exactly know the details and how they worked and what might be a good time to, for example, start saving for retirement,” she reflected. “I just didn’t know that it really mattered that much. Learning it through actually having to make a retirement savings plan for someone was very, very helpful.” Through their research, Stern and her partner, Max Greer ’27, learned about the ways that women—who have a longer life expectancy than men—can be at a disadvantage under the current Social Security system, in which years taken off from work for things like childcare can diminish savings. This prompted Stern to consider her own retirement planning. She said it made her think, “What am I going to do? I need to start [saving] early.”

Tyler Stokes ’27 noted that prior to this project, he didn’t feel a need to think about retirement savings. “Now that it makes sense financially to me, there’s a motivation,” he said after Stern and Greer’s presentation.

Stokes’ client was the parent looking for credit card advice for his son heading to college. Stokes and his partner, Nate Li ’27, ended up recommending the Discover Card based on the information they had about their client’s son and his needs. Stokes said their research was valuable on a personal level, too. “That Discover Card makes a lot of sense to me in terms of potentially an option for me to have and a conversation that I can have with my parents,” he said. “To be informed, to come to the table with my own thoughts and knowledge that I’ve learned from this project about how to set myself up for success financially in college, is really important, and I’m grateful.”

Fourteen members of the professional community stepped up to play the projects’ “clients”: Director of Technology and Innovation John Adams; Upper School Assistant Dean of Students Susanna Donahue P’03, ’06; science faculty member Yoshi Fujita; Director of Community Engagement Lucas Malo; Assistant Athletic Director Keith McLean P’28; English faculty member Mary Mertsch P’27, ’29; Assistant Athletic Director Freddy Meyer; Interim Head of Upper School Will Mills; Assistant Director of Admission Sabrina Particelli P’30; science faculty member Sequoyah Reynoso; Upper School Dean of Student Life Krista Sahrbeck; Director of Global Engagement Andrea Villagrán; Assistant Athletic Director Jacob Werrick ’16; and math faculty member Keith Zalaski.

Harder appreciated this level of support from her colleagues. “This is my 36th year as a high school teacher, and I think this is the biggest risk I’ve ever taken as a teacher. I’m proud of myself that I’m trying to keep learning and growing deep in my career, and I think it was good for the kids to see us be so vulnerable,” she said. “And so many colleagues from so many departments really stepped up and supported us while Mary and I were taking this risk.”

Carroll, who is in her second year teaching at Rivers, also noted that the project led her to interact with more members of the Rivers community. She also said she appreciated the opportunity to continue learning through the project—from Harder, and from their students as they worked through this first iteration of the financial planning project together. “That’s what teaching is all about, and that’s why, after 35-plus years, it’s still exciting to be a teacher, because you get to keep trying new things,” she said.