Baltimore elementary students learn budgeting in Ravens locker room

The Ravens locker room at M&T Bank Stadium became a budgeting classroom for about 100 Baltimore City elementary students, who learned that every football roster choice comes with a price.

Students from Lakeland Elementary/Middle School in Southwest Baltimore City and Medfield Heights Elementary School in Northwest Baltimore visited the stadium on April 27 for a financial fitness event built around football, saving and spending. The setting mattered. Instead of hearing about money management in a normal classroom, the children were inside one of Baltimore’s most recognizable sports spaces, surrounded by the team and the stadium they know from Sundays.

The hands-on lesson was designed to make financial literacy concrete. In one activity, students built a football team while staying under budget, forcing them to weigh tradeoffs and decide which players they could afford. In another, financial Jenga turned money questions into a game as students pulled blocks from the tower. The goal was not just to entertain, but to help children remember that every choice, whether at a store, a bank, or at home, comes with consequences.

Kelly Tallant, the Ravens’ director of community relations, said the team saw value in starting early, since some of the students may not have had much exposure to managing money at this age. That approach fits a broader push by the Ravens and M&T Bank to make financial education feel accessible rather than abstract. The two organizations launched the Financial Fitness Academy in December 2023 with EVERFI from Blackbaud, aiming to provide interactive instruction for Maryland students in grades 4 through 6.

The April 27 event also fits into Maryland’s wider financial-literacy requirements. State regulations have required local school systems since September 2011 to offer personal financial literacy instruction for students in grades 3 through 12. Baltimore City Public Schools has been building on that expectation in other ways too, including The Stock Market Game, which drew 320 students across 79 school-based teams last year.

The lesson in the Ravens locker room was as much about institutional reach as it was about money. M&T Bank has held naming rights for the stadium since 2003, and it extended its partnership with the Ravens through the 2037 NFL season in 2023. For the students who filled the locker room, the event tied budgeting and banking to a place and a team they already recognize, giving financial education a chance to stick long after the day ended.