Thomas R Brown Foundation

Office of economic education (oee)the Thomas R. Brown Foundation (trbf) continues its work with the university of Arizona office of economic education (oee) in providing economic education programs to k-12 classroom and pre-service teachers throughout Arizona. In 2023, the oee offered 35 professional development workshops, primarily in the form 1-hour virtual sessions. Professional development programs featured introductory content knowledge, instructional resources, complimentary copies of relevant texts, and special guest speakers. A total of 862 "seats" were filled across the 35 workshops, with some educators attending more than one program.

"v.o.t.e." (voices on the economy) seriesthe vote series is designed to teach economic issues from multiple perspectives to foster more productive civic engagement and more effective policy formation. Developed by amy cramer, ph.d., the series teaches the history of three different economic perspectives without promoting any specific economic or political viewpoint. The series begins with a three-day conference during which dr. cramer teaches the historic foundations for the three perspectives. The 14-part series, which has been offered for many years, concluded in 2023 with two virtual workshops in which 43 "seats" were filled (some educators attended more both programs). At all vote programs, attendees were offered a meal via a food delivery service. In addition to leading the teacher-training workshops, dr. amy cramer continued working with 8 teachers in the vote educator certification program.

Econifulunder this program umbrella, trbf provides professional development programs and instructional resources to educators working with students in grades 6-12+. In 2023 econiful offered 53 teacher training workshops, filling 1,700 "seats" with some educators attending multiple programs. Most workshops took the form of 1-hour virtual, synchronous events, but a handful of on-demand and longer events were offered. Econiful is developing a free, one-semester, on-level high school economics curriculum that will ultimately include 80 lesson plans. In 2023, the econiful team published 38 original lesson plans and worked with 10 teachers dubbed "econiful ambassadors" to field test some of those lessons. Team members also attended 5 education conferences to share econiful resources with teachers through presentations and/or exhibit tables.