How teachers are using sports to teach economics
St. Cloud State University economics professor Lynn MacDonald doesn’t have pink hair, but for a lecture about the WNBA, donning a pink wig had to be done as a tribute to a craze Minnesota Lynx players Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman started last season after dying their hair matching neon pink.
The lecture, which she presented with another professor King Banaian, was inspired by a lesson plan she made for high school econ teachers through the Minnesota Council on Economic Education looking at economic concepts and using the WNBA as a real-world example.
The seminar called “Courts, Contracts and Controversy: the economics of the Minnesota Lynx and the WNBA” spans topics like players pay, demand for new franchises and the growth and popularity sparked by factors like social media and brand deals.
The lesson is part of the center’s goal to provide engaging lesson plans that work with middle and high school educators to demystify concepts in econ.
“Students don’t often come into economics thinking that they’re going to like it,” MacDonald said. “They don’t know what it is, they think it’s boring and they think it’s going to be hard. So they come in a little bit fearful.”
To dispel some of that fear, educators are turning to real-world examples to illustrate concepts.
“Really economics, at it’s heart, is, easy to understand. It’s about choices. It’s understanding how we use our resources and our time and our money,” MacDonald said.
Real-world examples
Making econ accessible is a goal of St. Cloud State’s Center for Economic Education, said another St. Cloud State University economics professor Mana Komai-Molle. She said many educators are starting to think in less traditional approaches.
“In other words, I have come down from my ivory tower,” she said. “I am starting to think, how can I make economics more accessible?”
For MacDonald and a student collaborator, Jaden Newson, accessibility took the shape of women’s basketball. In recent years, the W has continued to grow in success and popularity, making it something that lends itself perfectly to teaching econ in real-world ways.
As they made the lesson, they considered the hype of star players, the pressure for better treatment for the athletes and the influence of social media in the conversation. MacDonald knew social media informs students’ perspectives just as much as it informs economics.
“Is everything that we’re seeing on social media actually fact based?” MacDonald said. “How can we better use the tools of economics to engage with that content that we’re seeing all the time?”
The lesson plan materials MacDonald and Newson made, along with the webinar explaining how to teach it, can be accessed and used for free.
The lessons are created to allow teachers to revisit them year to year without any major changes needed.
Newson, who is studying social studies and education, tested out the lesson herself as a student teacher.
“Economics, you could put it in anything, but when you put it into something that students like, it’s just so much better,” Newson said.
One of Newson’s favorite ways she piqued student interest was showing how the WNBA is similar to an oligopoly, which is similar to a cartel.
Making econ personal
For both MacDonald and Newson, making concepts more comprehensible for students was a natural passion. But this lesson topic was always personal. Newson grew up playing basketball in Colorado, so coming to Minnesota for school had an extra plus — she finally had a WNBA team of her own to root for, which made it impossible to turn down a project with the Minnesota Lynx at its center.
“It’s so cool. It’s like, ‘How can I not do it?’ Because, of all of this, and because of them, being here in Minnesota,” Newson said.
MacDonald has always loved sports but joined the W bandwagon after following Caitlin Clark’s career, which informed a different lesson MacDonald created about Clark’s effect on the league.
MacDonald also made lessons about Taylor Swift’s effect on NFL viewership and, most recently, minimum wage in Minnesota, which was awarded for its excellence by the National Association of Economic Educators earlier this month.
MacDonald said it shows how econ can be a lens to see the world.
“With econ, you can study anything you want,” she said. “If you’re interested in sports, you can do something with sports. If you’re interested in what’s happening with the minimum wage or poverty, you can use economics to help you study and understand that and even inform policy that can then achieve goals like helping people or whatever it is that you want to do and you care about.”
