The 2017 Outstanding Economics Educator Award will be presented to Nick Anello, a social science teacher at Homewood-Flossmoor High School, at the Econ Illinois banquet on May 18.
Econ Illinois, formerly the Illinois Council for Economic Education, selected Anello for the “comprehensive and variable ways” he presents topics of economics while promoting the value of economic education.
The 2017 Outstanding Economics Educator Award will be presented to Nick Anello, a social science teacher at Homewood-Flossmoor High School, at the Econ Illinois banquet on May 18.
Econ Illinois, formerly the Illinois Council for Economic Education, selected Anello for the “comprehensive and variable ways” he presents topics of economics while promoting the value of economic education.
Anello majored in history at Loras College. He took courses in economics, but never gave it much thought to pursue it as a professional career.
He came to H-F originally filling in for a teacher on maternity leave. His assignment was to teach world history and economics. It was 2008, the year of the housing market crash that sent the U.S. economy into a tailspin.
“We played the stock market game and it was miserable because every time we went to the library the portfolio went down,” he recalled. “Being in the moment it was like ‘How much deeper is this recession going to get?’”
Still, Anello said he found “teaching (economics) the first time was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed how rational it was.
“History is a lot of open-ended discussion and variations of things. Economics was that part of the day where we’re at Point A and we’ve got to get to Point B and it was very scientific, so it was a nice balance to my day,” the teacher explained.
Today Anello is teaching five sections of economics for the International Baccalaureate (IB), Advance Placement (AP) and College Prep classes. Each requires a different level of intensity, but he’s worked to give students theory presented with reality.
“Yes, it’s got something to do with money, but it’s more about choices and the idea of scarcity, opportunity and trade-offs,” he says he tells students at the start of the school year.
“In general their lives revolve around making choices, dealing with scarcity and facing opportunity costs. Those are the fundamentals in Economics I,” he said.
In macroeconomics, classes examine government theory and fiscal policy to understand what the tradeoffs are. For example, Congress allocating $900 billion for one project means another project, or several, won’t get that kind of funding.
“It’s the same thing for our budget. If you spend $20,000 on a car instead of $25,000, what could you have done with the extra $5,000? You can have a car and vacation, or just a car,” Anello said. It’s an easy way to show students how making decisions, can force budget scarcity or opportunity.
One teaching approach he uses is shared experience through simulations that the kids refer to as games. Their goal is simply to win the game, such as buying wheat futures on the open market, but Anello knows it teaches them economic principles and theory.
With each simulation, he conducts a debriefing asking students questions that relate to one of the first principles he’s teaching: circular flow.
“Students get a pretty good idea how the economy works through the game: how does the market work, what’s the system it operates under and the idea of bringing buyers and sellers together in markets,” Anello said. “Going forward they’ll remember those simulations a lot more than they would the graphs or the concepts five or 10 years from now.”
Anello is continuing the work of outstanding economics teacher at H-F. He said former teacher John Morton is considered “a legend in the field” for his writings and program development. Teacher Jim Chasey taught econ for more than 30 years, and he and his students brought recognition to H-F, especially through competitions, since 1996.
Anello’s award this year is a capstone to student honors won by teams under his direction, including an Illinois Econ Challenge state championship win in 2015 for AP and IB students. Anello describes it as the Scholastic Bowl of economics with only the top 10 teams in Illinois competing. The team of Michael Gislason, Evan Runburg, Robert Swetz and Aleksander LaTurner went on to place 15th nationally.
The following year, the team of Ryan Bergal, Michael Gislason, Michael Havighorst and Hannah Levy took fourth place in the state.