John Cook, Ed.D. is a high school business, accounting, and economics teacher in Savannah, Georgia, where he teaches at a Title I public high school. He has 17 years of classroom experience teaching courses including AP Macroeconomics, accounting, and financial literacy.
John holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and a Doctor of Education from Georgia Southern University. Before entering education, he worked in banking, an experience that continues to shape his approach to teaching markets, risk, and decision-making. He currently serves as department chair and FBLA advisor, with a focus on building strong, hands-on programs that connect coursework to real-world applications.
He is deeply involved with the College Board, having served as an AP Macroeconomics Reader for 14 years. John has also contributed to the development of AP Business with Personal Finance in multiple roles, including work on the course framework, Project-Based Learning and Assessment Development committees, and as a Course Ambassador.
John is well known for coaching student teams in competitive stock market simulations, emphasizing disciplined risk-taking and strategic thinking. His teams have earned multiple state and national titles, including a first-place national finish in the Capitol Hill Challenge. In 2013, he was named Georgia Economics Teacher of the Year.
John lives with his wife Kirstin and daughter Taylor (7) in Savannah, and enjoys biking, live music and chess in his spare time.
WHY PROJECT BASED LEARNING
Project Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects.
The AP Business with Personal Finance is a new, year-long Advanced Placement course launching in the 2026-27 school year that blends core business principles with essential personal financial literacy. It is part of the College Board's AP Career Kickstart program and was developed in partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The AP Business with Personal Finance is a new, year-long Advanced Placement course launching in the 2026-27 school year that blends core business principles with essential personal financial literacy. It is part of the College Board's AP Career Kickstart program and was developed in partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
How the PBL Series Works
- 4 days of online or in-person professional learning during an AP Summer Institute
- Up to 5 online support sessions throughout the school year
- Access to project implementation guides aligned to the course framework
Course Highlights
- AP Business with Personal Finance is a project-driven course that immerses students in the world of business through entrepreneurship, marketing, financial management, and strategic decision-making. Students develop their own business ideas using a design-thinking process, building out every dimension — from identifying customer problems and crafting value propositions to designing supply chains, setting pricing strategies, and creating marketing campaigns. Along the way, they learn how businesses operate within competitive markets shaped by political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal (PESTEL) forces, and they apply frameworks like Porter's Five Forces and SWOT analysis to evaluate real business challenges.
The course also equips students with essential personal finance knowledge, covering saving, borrowing, investing, insurance, taxes, and budgeting. Students learn to read and interpret financial statements — income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements — for both business and personal decision-making. Throughout the course, students practice five core skill categories: concept application, entrepreneurship, decision-making, communication, and collaboration, preparing them to think critically about both the businesses they build and the financial choices they'll face in their own lives. - During our AP Summer Institute we will have three main areas of focus:
1) The course framework. We will analyze and engage with the document outlining what students of this class are expected to know after they take it. By the end of the week a major goal is for participants to have familiarity with the content of this course.
2) The project-based learning curriculum. The College Board has had a committee (of which I am a member) working for over two years to develop course activities/lessons/projects for this course. We will explore many of these activities, demonstrate them, do them as though we were students, and come away with both a large quantity of suggested activities for all five units, AND sufficient exposure to those activities to set participants up for successfully using them in class.
3) The AP exam. We will use the AP Classroom test bank for this course to gain an understanding of what the multiple choice and free response sections of the AP exam will look like. Participants will get practice both answering and scoring these questions. We will discuss how free response questions are scored by the College Board, and will use their rubrics to score responses. By the conclusion of the AP Summer Institute, participants will have a good working knowledge of what is included on this exam and how to best prepare students for it. - AGENDA:
Day 1 — Unit 1: Businesses, Competition, and New Ideas
**Morning**
- Welcome, introductions, and APSI overview
- Navigating the CED: course skills, content structure, and how to read the framework
- Exploring AP Classroom: digital activation, unit guides, question bank, and progress checks
- Deep dive into Unit 1 content: What is a business? Markets, competitive advantage, and PESTEL factors
**Afternoon**
- Unit 1 content continued: Business ideas, entrepreneurship, vision and mission, ethics, organization, and supply chains
- Experiencing PBL Project 1: Foundations of Market Entry — how students identify problems, develop product ideas, and build their Business Canvas
- Exploring the question bank: examining Unit 1 items, identifying content-skill pairings
- Debrief and discussion: pacing Unit 1, sequencing decisions, and connecting framework topics to PBL
Day 2 — Unit 2: Marketing
**Morning**
- Unit 2 framework overview: Marketing to customers, consumer behavior, market research, product development, pricing, place, and promotion
- Exploring how the PBL curriculum connects marketing concepts to the Business Canvas project
- Hands-on activity: Experiencing a sample PBL marketing task as a participant
**Afternoon**
- Market research and data visualization: teaching students to conduct and interpret primary and secondary research
- Consumer behavior and Cialdini's principles of influence: instructional strategies and engaging activities
- Exploring the question bank: examining Unit 2 items and discussing assessment strategies
- Debrief and discussion: balancing breadth of marketing content with depth of PBL application
Day 3 — Unit 3: Personal Finance, Business Finance, and Accounting
**Morning**
- Unit 3 framework overview: Personal saving and borrowing, credit and debt management
- Teaching personal finance through real-world application: budgeting, pay stubs, insurance, and taxes
- Instructional strategies for making personal finance personally relevant to students
**Afternoon**
- Business finance and accounting: expenses, financial capital, income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements
- Experiencing PBL financial tasks: how students build projected income statements and financial plans for their Business Canvas ventures
- Exploring the question bank: examining Unit 3 items, with emphasis on calculation-based questions and financial statement interpretation
- Debrief and discussion: scaffolding financial literacy across the course
## Day 4 — Units 4 & 5: Management, Strategy, and Personal Goals
**Morning**
- Unit 4 framework overview: Management and leadership, KPIs and benchmarking, strategy and decision-making (PACED model), Porter's Five Forces, and SWOT analysis
- Experiencing PBL Unit 4 activities: KPI selection challenges, benchmark sorting, crisis simulation "Problem Wheel," and strategic decision-making with the Business Canvas
- Exploring the question bank: examining Unit 4 items
**Afternoon**
- Unit 5 framework overview: Taxes and net income, managing personal risk, saving and investing for education, housing, and retirement
- Connecting Units 4 and 5 to the full course arc: how management strategy and personal financial planning serve as the course capstone
- Exploring the question bank: examining Unit 5 items
- Course planning workshop: pacing, syllabus development, and the AP Course Audit
- Closing discussion: sharing takeaways, building your AP community, and next steps for the school year