Transcript

The area behind is really reflective of something that the kids in the class took on and built themselves and the only part that I have in it is encouraging and fostering it in the classroom and it's called "Bo Bucks." It's called Bo Bucks because it's named after Obama's dog Bo. The reason that happened is because we read a book written by Barak Obama and the kids really fell in love with his dog in that book, so they democratically voted the name for the currency called Bo Bucks.

Bo Bucks is a classroom currency, where students make products and sell them amongst themselves. The only criteria is that the products are made and not bought, so they can't go to their local stores purchase things, and come back and sell them and that's to keep it equitable in the classroom. 

The way it all got started was one day I was watching kids trading some things with each other and I asked them "what are you doing?" and I think initially they didn't want to devolve what they were doing and we had a talk about it and I thought it was great! They were making origami and trading it for other products. So that's how the whole Bo Bucks got started is we talked about what economy is and how's this going to work fairly in the classroom? And they came up with this really, all by themselves and it's taken off. 
Originally, we started with a $1.00, a $2.00, a $5.00 and a 20 and no cents, and that was from a mathematically perspective just to help everyone in the class be able to keep track of their money. They all have to have a log book of money that comes in and money that is spent and then slowly once they get the hang of that then we started to introduce 5 cent, 10 cent and 25 cent pieces. 

The area behind me are the ads for each of their businesses. Not all the students, but some of the students have decided to start businesses; selling products that they made. The products range from board games to origami to things made of popsicle sticks, toothpicks, all types of things, plasticine, anything they can think of and think someone would like to purchase with their Bo Bucks. One of the students have a 50/50 draw where they collect $2.00 per ticket and gives the winner 50 percent. Another student is actually loaning money and charging a small interest fee. And each of the students receives 20 Bo Bucks the first Monday of every month and that way if you don't want to have a business, you still have a source of income. You can just choose to save or spend your money as you see fit.

Each of the posters they get one free month up on the board and then they have to pay the bank, which is me, to keep their poster up on the board. Their poster can take up half of the cupboard door or smaller, but they cannot have, for their business the entire door. So, they have to be able to share the space.

This is an example of one of the products that businesses run by one of the kids sells. This one is a board game and it sells for five Bo Bucks and it's been a really popular item in the class.