Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Jessica Woods, an 11th-grader at Glenvar High School, looks over her cards during a game of "Pit."

A board lists the stock market teams in a personal finance class last month at Glenvar High School. Personal finance classes are now mandatory for high school graduation in Roanoke County.

The talk on Wall Street may be all about bankruptcies and bailouts but trading is strong inside Kari Hancock's personal finance class at Glenvar High School in Roanoke County.

About 20 students are playing a card game called "Pit," in which they swap corn, coffee, soybeans and other commodities, arbitrarily inflating or depressing prices in the course of their rambunctious trading. Just like in real life.

Although Roanoke County has taught personal finance before, starting with this year's incoming freshmen, the semester-long class is a graduation requirement.

Just in time too, according to education officials. In the age of the foreclosure, a little financial education can go a long way.

"They go to college or they leave high school and they're bombarded with credit card offers," said Deborah Bliss, mathematics coordinator at the Virginia Department of Education. "They need the information to evaluate what they're doing financially. Do you think Social Security is going to be available when you turn 65?"

Two years ago, in response to General Assembly legislation, state education officials outlined objectives for teaching financial literacy in Virginia's public schools. The state left the details up to local school districts. Some, such as Salem and Roanoke County, made the financial literacy classes part of their graduation requirements. Others, such as Roanoke, neither require a personal finance class to graduate nor offer a dedicated class to it. The city does, however, teach eighth-graders civics and economics.

At Glenvar, students learn how to complete basic bank transactions, pay their taxes, save money, buy insurance, finance a car or a house and balance their checkbooks.

"Because they have a check in their checkbook they think that they have money," said Hancock. "It is one class that's going to live with them for the rest of their lives."

Hancock also has the students calculate how much they cost their parents in food, rent, clothing and other necessities of life, an exercise she called "eye-opening" for the students. In some cases, she has found that some parents could benefit from the class as well.

"I've had kids say, 'My mom owes me $200,' " she said.

The class will also issue students $100,000 in fake money to invest in the stock market. But will they, unlike their elders (who play with real money), be wise enough to stay clear of those dirty words: mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps? Or will they invent some other complex financial instrument to enrich themselves beyond imagination?

"It's pretty cool, because someday, I might want to invest," said Jessica Woods, a junior.

Woods already has a checking and a savings account, but, she said, she has not always been very diligent about the balance in her checking account.

"I didn't realize that I didn't have enough so I went over a little bit," she recalled. "Since then I learned to save my money."

On a recent morning, with the Dow Jones industrial average locked in its now-familiar yo-yo gyrations, Woods and her classmates played round after round of their commodities trading card game. They also seemed to be picking up the pros' tricks, especially a classroom variation of insider trading. Fortunately, Hancock was there to play the role of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Andrew Landreth, a freshman, said the class taught him "how to not get cheated on contracts."

The trick: "Read the fine print."

He also has a bank account and receives statements every month.

"I don't really look at them," he said sheepishly.