Mrs. Herrild has been a teacher at De Pere High School for 22 years now. She teaches business classes like Personal Finance and Microsoft Excel and Word.
Mrs. Herrild is one of few teachers in Wisconsin who went down to Madison to convince the governor, Tony Evers, to make personal finance a required credit in Wisconsin. This was successful and now Wisconsin is one of 29 states to have this requirement starting with the class of 2028.
“When we talk about student success and preparing students for the future, if we don’t give them at least some basic financial knowledge, how are we saying that they’re prepared?” Mrs. Herrild stated, “Because no matter what you go into, whether it’s college, career, military, any path that you take, you’re going to have to deal with your money and manage that.”
Recently, Mrs. Herrild has been featured in a documentary titled, “The Most Important Class You Never Had: Mission, Movement, & Momentum.” The documentary started filming in December 2024 and now has a current release date for sometime in November, where it can be watched on Youtube.
“Seeing it all put together in a documentary is really special,” Herrild said. “I’m just excited to share my passion about this class with everybody and to show our community in a really positive light.”
The documentary focuses mainly on the stories from four teachers and one student from different states in the United States. The goal of the documentary is called Goal 2030, which is looking into the idea that every state will have a personal finance credit requirement by the year 2030.
“Next Gen Personal Finance is a group that I’ve been working with for years,” Herrild said. “They are the ones who commissioned the documentary to be done and so they picked teachers, students, and stories that they knew about from the country. Because I worked with them so much and they helped get the requirement passed in Wisconsin, they knew that this would be a cool story to tell.”
Mrs. Herrild is very dedicated to personal finance and making sure everyone leaves high school with information that will help them succeed in the future.
She also explained, “I’m just super proud of this and to me I feel like this is the biggest thing I could ever do as a teacher. It’s like a legacy thing. Being part of the team that testified it in Madison at the capitol is really powerful, and having my kid be part of that process was really powerful.”
