I have been asked to write a description of how I use this book in my class setting. Currently, I teach a Hybrid class. Students are with me 2 hours/week in the classroom and have assignments online to do outside of class. My students are primarily individuals seeking their GEDs or people who have taken our College Placement Test and have not scored high enough to enter college, so they are in the process of improving their skills to re-test. Most of my students are first generation college students. The class does have a reading skill prerequisite equal to that of gaining entrance into a GED class at our college.

I use the chapters in the book after I have had a class session on the topic of each chapter. The chapters provide greater depth on each topic than I have time for during our class meeting. I have built into the chapters, skills students need for the GED test, for example, reading charts and graphs or calculating compound interest. During the class sessions, I try to show the charts/graphs that will be in the chapter the student needs to read and discuss the information that is visually presented. I try to help students evaluate the information and think about what is being presented. If there is a calculation presented in the chapter, I make sure students understand how the numbers are arrived at what variables are changing.

Chapter 9, Hidden Money: Scholarships, has examples of student essays. I have the students read those essays in class and discuss who they would select to give a scholarship to and why. It helps students to understand the selection process through role playing.

Each chapter has self-reflective type questions included to guide students to think about the key components presented in each chapter. The questions may serve as ‘springboards” into the chapter topic. In addition, those questions serve as each week’s homework and are submitted to me online. Students could create journals for the class, but my goal also involves helping students be able to function with our college’s online class platform.

This book was designed to based on Community College’s in Oregon and was part of a grant from openoregon.org.