The Art of Teaching Business - Ep. 4: Teaching Accounting Series (1 of 3) - Mastering the Basics

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In this episode of 'The Art of Teaching Business' podcast, host Denise Leigh delves into the foundational concepts necessary for teaching high school accounting effectively. With 25 years of teaching experience, Leigh outlines the three key topics that students must master: debits and credits, GAAP concepts, and the three main financial statements. She emphasizes the importance of understanding these concepts thoroughly to ensure students' success in more advanced topics. Leigh also discusses the utilization of textbooks, balancing traditional methods with innovative and engaging strategies, and hints at future episodes focusing on instructional strategies.

Highlights

Focus on three core topics: debits and credits, GAAP concepts, and financial statements. 🎯
Balance textbook use with creative teaching methods to keep students engaged. 📘
Incorporate real-world applications like 'Pamela's Pies' for practical learning. 🥧
Connect with other teachers online for support and inspiration. 🤝
Don't rush through chapters; ensure students truly understand the material before moving on. 🐢

Key Takeaways

Master the basics: Focus on debits, credits, and journaling to set a strong foundation. 💪
GAAP concepts are essential: Teach why ethics and principles matter in accounting. 📚
Key financial statements: Ensure understanding of the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. 💼
Engage students using creative methods beyond textbooks to enhance learning. 🎨
Stay connected and learn from fellow teachers through social media platforms! 🌐

Overview

Denise Leigh, a seasoned high school accounting teacher, kicks off her podcast series on mastering the art of teaching accounting by breaking down the essentials. With a quarter-century of experience, she passionately discusses the critical concepts that form the bedrock of accounting education. Her approach includes a mix of traditional textbook use and innovative teaching techniques to ensure her students not only learn but excel.

Leigh emphasizes the importance of understanding fundamental accounting concepts such as debits and credits, the principles of GAAP, and key financial statements like the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. She warns against speeding through the curriculum, advocating instead for mastery of these basics to facilitate advanced learning and practical application in real-world scenarios.

To create a dynamic and engaging learning environment, Leigh encourages moving beyond textbook instruction. She utilizes digital simulations and real-life examples, like 'Pamela's Pies', and connects with a broader teaching community online. This holistic approach ensures her students grasp complex topics with ease, preparing them for further challenges in accounting classes and beyond.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The Introduction chapter of 'The Art of Teaching Business' podcast is hosted by Denise Leigh, who is enthusiastic about teaching accounting. She acknowledges receiving numerous questions regarding accounting and expresses her fondness for teaching the subject. In this specific episode, Denise will delve into the key concepts that should be emphasized in an accounting class. This episode is part of a series of three podcasts dedicated entirely to the topic of accounting.
00:30 - 01:00: Overview of Denise's Teaching Approach The chapter provides an overview of Denise's teaching approach in high school accounting. It hints at future episodes which will cover instructional strategies, tools, and engagement techniques used in her accounting classes. Denise, who is marking her 25th year of teaching, imparts skills in High School Accounting 101 and runs the Academy of Accounting.
01:00 - 01:30: Accounting Classes Structure The chapter titled 'Accounting Classes Structure' discusses the organization and curriculum of accounting classes taught by the instructor. The classes are structured as 42-minute sessions, five days a week, throughout the year, indicating a non-semester format. There are two main classes: Accounting 1 and Accounting 2. Accounting 1 is focused on teaching the foundational concepts of accounting. In Accounting 2, the emphasis is on automated accounting, digital technology, and software, with a particular focus on Excel and QuickBooks. This structure allows for extensive student-teacher interaction and in-depth learning.
01:30 - 03:00: Key Concepts to Master in Accounting This chapter emphasizes the importance of mastering key concepts in accounting to excel, particularly in the use of Excel software. The focus is on three critical elements that students should understand and master in their accounting classes. The first key concept highlighted is debits and credits, with an emphasis on account classification. The chapter suggests that teachers should ensure students grasp these fundamentals to ensure their success in accounting.
03:00 - 05:00: Importance of Financial Statements This chapter discusses the importance of proper journaling techniques in accounting, emphasizing the need to journalize transactions accurately and proficiently. The initial chapters of a standard accounting textbook cover these fundamental concepts, usually comprising chapters 1 to 4, including posting. The speaker confirms the use of textbooks in their teaching, specifically mentioning reliance on popular accounting textbook companies.
05:00 - 06:30: Benefits of Networking and Collaborating The chapter discusses the importance and benefits of networking and collaborating, emphasizing the value of engaging beyond traditional materials such as textbooks. Although the speaker appreciates the comprehensive information provided by the textbook, they acknowledge that students may not find it engaging, prompting the need to adapt teaching methods to better connect with and engage students.
06:30 - 08:00: Challenges in Teaching Accounting The chapter discusses the challenges faced by educators in teaching accounting, focusing on the necessity of creative instructional strategies to engage students. The narrative emphasizes the importance of learning from students and adapting teaching methods accordingly. It highlights the balance between covering essential accounting concepts, such as posting, and not becoming bogged down in too much textbook detail. The goal is to ensure students understand fundamental principles and can apply them effectively, rather than merely memorizing procedures.
08:00 - 10:00: The Eight-Column Worksheet and Scaffolding This chapter focuses on the eight-column worksheet and its application in accounting education. It describes a teaching method where the instructor guides students through a mastery problem related to the eight-column worksheet. The approach emphasizes collaborative learning on the mastery problem, allowing students to build confidence before tackling individual exercises. The chapter suggests that students should be encouraged to work independently after the guided session since they possess the necessary skills and intelligence. A supplementary tool mentioned is an accounting simulation called 'Pamela's Pies', which likely provides a practical application of the concepts learned in the eight-column worksheet curriculum.
10:00 - 11:00: Conclusion and Future Topics This chapter discusses the author's approach to teaching content by having students engage in two different types of activities: a paper-based mastery exercise and a digital simulation called 'Pamela's Pies.' The author prefers these methods over the software provided by major textbook companies, having tried and disliked them in the past. The chapter concludes with the students gaining a clear understanding of the material.

The Art of Teaching Business - Ep. 4: Teaching Accounting Series (1 of 3) - Mastering the Basics Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 Hi, Business Teacher Friends, and welcome back to ‘The Art of Teaching Business’ podcast. I am Denise Leigh your host, and these next three podcast episodes are going to be everything accounting. I get so many questions about accounting, and I am very vocal about accounting being one of my favorite classes to teach. So, this particular episode will be all about exactly ‘What is the key concepts that should be taught in Accounting class?’
00:30 - 01:00 I will also, in future episodes, be talking about instructional strategies, instructional tools for accounting, as well as, just how I keep the kids engaged in my Accounting class. So, let's dig into High School Accounting 101, and teaching Academy of Accounting. So, this is my 25th year teaching accounting. I teach high school. I am a teacher that has
01:00 - 01:30 42-minute periods, and I teach five days a week for a year, so it is not a semester class. Again, five days a week, 42-minute periods, for a year, so I have a lot of time with my students. I teach an Accounting 1 class, and I teach an Accounting 2 class. My Accounting 1 class really focuses on the concepts of accounting, and Accounting 2 really is the basics of automated accounting, digital technology, and software, as well as, a lot of Excel! So, I teach QuickBooks and
01:30 - 02:00 Excel in my second level of Accounting class. We cannot teach enough Excel, so I will go a little bit more into that, here in a bit, but there are three things that I believe students need to absolutely master in Accounting class. And if your students have mastered these, you have done your job, dear teacher friend. The very first one is debits and credits, account classification,
02:00 - 02:30 and journaling. That all goes together, but journaling correctly, and flawlessly, and being able to give a transaction and journalize it with master is the first key concept. In our major textbook companies, that would be Chapters 1 -4, and yes, I'm including the posting chapter. So, do I use a textbook? Yes, I do. I use a textbook. I use the most popular textbook company,
02:30 - 03:00 and I like it. Actually, I love the textbook. I feel like that textbook raised me, as a teacher, because of the scope and sequence within its pages. What I hate about it is that students hate it. So, if my students are giving me that vibe, and they are rolling their eyes when the textbooks in front of them, I know I need to veer away from the textbook. Use its content, teach its great,
03:00 - 03:30 rich, content, but in creative ways. So, again, we need to learn from our students, right? So, this isn't on instructional strategies. This particular one is what they need to master, and yes, I do teach posting. I don't teach everything in the textbook on posting. I have the students post a couple times. I make sure that they understand posting, verbatim, and they understand the concept of how we get account balances, and then I move on. So, I do the
03:30 - 04:00 mastery problem with the students in the textbook. I don't do the work together, the on your own, and the application. I do the mastery problem with them. We do that as a class. After they do that, I mean I don't want to insult my students’ intelligence. They are able to fly on their own, and I have an accounting a series, an accounting simulation actually, called ‘Pamela's Pie’s’,
04:00 - 04:30 and that is what they post by themselves. So, I'm really showing them posting content in two ways. They are seeing it on paper. I do not use the software that comes with the major textbook company. I don't subscribe to that. I did one year, and I just didn't like it for other reasons, but we do the paper version of the mastery together, and then they do ‘Pamela's Pies’ which is my own digital simulation, and then we call it a day. The students understand where
04:30 - 05:00 accounting balances, where account balances, come from. So, the very first thing that they need to master, again, is debits and credits, transactions, and generating account balances. The second thing that they need to master is the understanding of GAAP Concepts, and you know my GAAP book is from 1997. I have it. It has an old last name, that I don't even have anymore
05:00 - 05:30 on the textbook, or on the GAAP book. I show it to the students. It’s at the front of my class, and it's about three inches thick. It's very thick, daunting, very small text. It has a lot of content in it because there are a lot of GAAP Concepts. There are about 10 that I think accounting students need to understand, and if you ever used my snip note accounting system, the several I think there's 12 in there that are featured are the ones that I think beginning level
05:30 - 06:00 accounting students need to understand. So, that's why I put them in snip notes. Those snip notes are all of the essential information, that I believe needs to be covered in a first level accounting class or a survey of accounting class. So, GAAP Concepts, they need to understand why we have ethics and principles for accounting, and they need to really understand those 12 GAAP Concepts,
06:00 - 06:30 so that's the second thing that I think that they need to master. The third thing that I think they need to master is the three, the top three, most important financial statements, and of course, that's the income statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flows statement. Now, I told you I really like our textbook. I have. I feel like it's raised me as an accounting teacher, but I've also had the opportunity to work with Accounting firms. Most recently, Deloitte,
06:30 - 07:00 on the Deloitte challenges that are housed on their website, and I will actually link those free challenges in the show notes below, in which I wrote the content for those challenges, but my work with Accounting firms and my banter and discussion with these professionals has taught me a lot beyond the pages of the textbook. I know that income statement and balance sheet
07:00 - 07:30 is unbelievably important. The students need to understand that on an income statement that's where we are finding out if we are have been profitable or not. That it's the difference between our expenses and our revenue. Students need to absolutely understand the balance sheet is the accounting equation, and we want our assets to equal our liabilities and owner's equity, and that's really where checks and balances come from. There's a systematic way to see if we are correct
07:30 - 08:00 and accurate with our accounting records, but the third statement that I mentioned, the cash flow statement, isn't mentioned in the textbook until page number 600 and something. I am deliberately not mentioning a textbook specifically because I'm not endorsing any Textbook Company. However, I think that's a big flaw - that we're not introducing cash flows with the financial statements that are in a much earlier chapter in the textbook. So, I make sure my Accounting
08:00 - 08:30 students understand income statement, balance sheet, and cash flows statement. I want them to know the different components of the cash flows statement, like investing operations and operating, and so forth. So, the three things that are key things that students need to master, again are debits, credits, account classification with journalizing, GAAP concepts, and why we
08:30 - 09:00 have ethics and principles in accounting, and financial statements; specifically, the income statement, balance sheet, and the cash flow statement. Now, I belong to a lot of social media platforms that are groups of teachers, and I have to say those platforms are such a gift. When I started teaching 25 years ago, there was no social media. There was no other teachers to talk to. It wasn't until I was Year 19 teaching that I even spoke to another, this is hard to believe,
09:00 - 09:30 that I ever spoke to another Accounting teacher. I often wondered, like ‘What are they teaching?’ and ‘How quickly are their students getting through Chapters 1 and 2?’. I have these questions about, like the cash control chapter, and ‘Are they even teaching the eight-column worksheet?’. I would have been at the edge of my seat to be able to banter and discuss what was taught in their classroom because, again I was the only one teaching the content in my school, and still,
09:30 - 10:00 I am the only one teaching the content in my school. Now that we have social media, we can collaborate with other teachers and it is such a gift, but sometimes I read the posts, and I get…I just cringe... and I'll tell you why. If it's around the holidays and someone is on Chapter 15 and they started in August, like you know everybody else, sometimes that makes teachers feel like a loser,
10:00 - 10:30 like ‘Oh my gosh they're already through Chapter 15’. Let me tell you something about that. That doesn't always mean that their students understood Chapters 1 through 14 to the Mastery Level. I'm telling you that the three things that need to be mastered in Accounting 1, in order for students to move on and learn more, is the three, the key three concepts - the debits
10:30 - 11:00 and credits transactions and classifications; GAAP Concepts (the 12 that I feel are the most important); and the three most important financial statements. If those things aren't mastered, then the teacher that reached Chapter 15 by the holidays, has not, in my eyes, been doing their students any justice. Sometimes we just want to drill through the content. We are
11:00 - 11:30 eager to get through the chapters, and we don't allow students to truly lead instruction. Truly leading instruction is making sure we're doing those short formative assessments to make sure that our students are understanding concepts before moving on to the next concept. So, that said, I am sure that by the holidays I am through the cash control chapter, which in my
11:30 - 12:00 textbook is Chapter 5, and that sometimes blows people's minds, but I spend a good four weeks on Chapter 1 because and Chapter 2, those chapters are so important! I show them textbook examples. We do textbook problems or transactions. As well as, a whole series of digital activities that I created
12:00 - 12:30 to engage my students. Bring the real world in as much as possible. If I had to add a fourth, and I probably should add a fourth, key thing that should be taught in accounting is, what's the purpose of accounting, and like its purpose, and what are the opportunities in accounting? Why is accounting “accounting”? Where does it have? Where does it fit in the
12:30 - 13:00 scheme of the business world because it is, we know, the language of business? So, I also cover that in those chapters, and I go far beyond the textbook in Chapters 1 and 2, and that is a whole series of digital activities. I can link some in the show notes, that I do in Chapters 1 and 2. Again, mastery does not mean understanding. Mastery means that it has become so fluent for them and easy for them, that the rest of the content you teach,
13:00 - 13:30 you could even motor through it because they understand the most important concepts. So, I urge you to not, in any way shape or form, look at what someone else is covering in their textbook, and how many chapters they're covering without being really sure that your students understand concepts. Don't move on. Don't motor through the information. The other thing that I would have
13:30 - 14:00 loved to ask an accounting teacher is, do you teach posting, which I already said yes I teach it, because they need to know how balances are generated, but I don't dwell on it because nobody posts. I think it's important for students to know no one is manually sitting at a desk posting by hand in our small businesses. I also make sure my students understand that small businesses are 400 employees or less in the service realm. So, it's important for them to realize a lot
14:00 - 14:30 of small businesses aren't very small, actually. So, no one it has the time for that, is what I'm trying to say. It's all automated, but the brain needs to understand where the balances come from. The other thing I asked a lot, and I would have loved as a young accounting teacher to ask someone else, is the eight-column worksheet. Do you teach the eight-column worksheet? Because if you show that to an accountant, that's a practicing account, they'll say “Yeah, that's really
14:30 - 15:00 not familiar with me”. I know this because when I showed the Deloitte folks, they're like, ‘Yeah I really don't know what that is.’ They understood it because they understand accounting, but they, they're not sure. So, let me tell you what I've learned. You know, we know what scaffolding means in education. Scaffolding - scaffolding means learning concepts, and then building on that, and then building on that concept, and then building on that concept. Accounting is a perfect example of a class where scaffolding is super important because you can't understand Chapter 2 until
15:00 - 15:30 you've mastered Chapter 1. You can't understand Chapter 3 until you've mastered Chapter 2, and so on and so forth. So, what the eight-column worksheet is, is it's scaffolding. It's bringing together everything we've learned and then taking the eight columns, and from the trial balance knowing that our debits have to equal our credits. From the adjustment columns, knowing that those now have to be journalized and posted to adjust those two consumable assets for Accounting 1,
15:30 - 16:00 which are of course, prepaid insurance and supplies. The other, the income statement columns, are all of the accounts that are listed on the income statement, and the balance sheet columns are all of the accounts that are listed on the balance sheet. Because, of course, our textbook will take us next to income statement, balance sheet, and so forth. So, you see why I say I really do like the textbook. It has been a great teacher to this teacher. The textbook series that
16:00 - 16:30 I've used, I've used for years. I started with its 7th edition, and now I'm using the 11th Edition, and it's been a great old friend. It has taught me scope, sequence, and scaffolding. The students don't like textbooks, so I will in a future episode talk about some instructional techniques, strategies, and tools that I use, to make accounting very engaging for my students, but this episode I
16:30 - 17:00 just really wanted to tell you 'Stay in your lane', 'Stay on task', and make sure that your students understand before you move on. Especially when learning those key three components, and if I were to add a four, it would be the purpose of accounting and accounting careers, which is something that I always make sure that I cover in Accounting class. Again, this is Denise Leigh, and thank you so much for listening to ‘The Art of Teaching Business.’ [Music]