Matt and Jadrian aren’t physically in Northern Kentucky anymore, but they are back with another episode they recorded during the Journal of Economics Teaching’s Symposium on Economics Teaching. This is the third episode from that weekend and features a conversation with John Kruggel. John is the Director of the Center for Economic Education at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. John shares his experience directing a center that emphasizes ways to help economics teachers teach economics better, discusses his graduate degree in economics education, and asks Matt a burning question he’s had since he first started listening to the podcast.
In this episode, we discuss:
The role of Centers for Economics Education in helping area teachers
The University of Delaware’s graduate program for economics educators
A burning question John has had for Matt for the past few months
And a whole lot more!
Catch up on some old episodes:
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Watch this episode on YouTube:
Some show notes:
This was the third episode we recorded from 16 Lots Brewery in Newport Kentucky and we were excited to have John Kruggel join us as a guest. For drinks, John went with a Palmyra Hefeweizen, Matt had a Vltava Pilsner, and Jadrian went with a New Spain Mexican Lager. All our drinks came from 16 Lots, and all had been amazing!
We were both really curious about John’s role with the JMU Center for Economic Education and how it fits into the larger picture of economics education. If you’re an economics educator on social media, you can follow their Center on Twitter and Facebook. One of the really cool projects that John shared was the GEM Fair, which focuses on global entrepreneurship and marketplaces. Elementary students create products and come to JMU to buy and sell their products with students from other schools. Some of those students even end up at JMU in the future.
John is also a graduate of the University of Delaware’s Lerner School with a Master of Arts in Economics and Entrepreneurship for Educators. The program is geared towards economics teachers who want to improve the way they are teaching their courses. It’s mostly a summer-intensive program that also has online instruction during the regular semesters. If you’re an HS economics teacher thinking about getting a master’s degree, it’s worth checking out.
Before finding out John’s favorite topic to teach, Jadrian wanted to know what John thought was the biggest difference between teaching college economics instead of high school economics. After, we got to talk about John’s favorite topic: comparative advantage. Those two topics were more connected than we may have realized.
John has also been a loyal listener of the podcast since the beginning of the show, and he’s been curious about Matt’s love of Broadway. He’s waited months to ask this question, and we get to find out why Matt fell in love with musicals. If you weren’t aware, Matt operates the Broadway Economics website and even wrote a book on it! You’ll have to listen to the show to find out why!
This week’s pop culture references:
In the last episode, Jadrian couldn’t come up with a topic so he made Matt do two. This time around, Jadrian was supposed to contribute two topics. Thankfully, John picked an easy topic with a lot of great pop culture references.
Jadrian started with his opening pop culture scene for the lesson on comparative advantage and was one of the first scenes he posted on the Economics Media Library. In an episode of King of the Hill, Hank and his friends debate the relative advantages of each country:
John’s discussion was actually about a scene from Kim’s Convenience that he sent to the Economics Media Library a few years ago. A husband and wife switched roles and realized that they weren’t too good at doing what the other ones usually do. John also shared a great scene from Outsourced in which an angry caller complains about an American eagle statue being made outside of America. The help desk agent calmly explains they could make it in America, but it would cost more. The caller reluctantly hangs on to the cheaper option.
It turned out that we all had more pop culture references than we realized. Even though Matt was supposed to skip this episode, he opted to contribute an absolute advantage reference from Annie Get Your Gun. It’s a great example that sometimes there are situations where people could do everything, but comparative advantage often shows that we collectively benefit when we specialize:
On the topic of absolute advantage, Jadrian through in a Disney reference. It was supposed to be his second contribution if John and Matt hadn’t added extra ones. In Beauty and the Beast, LeFou describes how Gaston is so much better than anyone else around, even when it comes to spitting:
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