School teaches a great deal. It does not teach this.
Genius Learning teaches the money, property, business and legal skills that school leaves out: to children in weekly in-person classes, and to adults in a self-paced online course built for Canada.
2 in 3
Canadians never learned money management in school.
Edward Jones, 2024
8 in 10
Canadians say the classroom is the best place to learn about money.
Edward Jones, 2023
Most Canadians meet a lease, a paystub, a credit card statement and a mortgage without ever having been taught how they work. We think a child who has read all four before Grade 12, and has run a small business, is ready for the real world in a way a report card cannot show.
So we built a curriculum around seven strands, taught every year at the level the grade can use, and a class with a shape a child can rely on: one hour, twenty minutes of teaching, twenty minutes of paper worksheet, twenty minutes of review. Two classes a week, all year, in a private classroom with ten or fewer students and a certified teacher at the front.
- Financial literacy and money concepts
- Mortgages, loans and credit
- Jobs and workforce preparation
- Taxes and personal finance
- Legal awareness
- Real estate
- Entrepreneurship and business skills
The founder
Daniel SheikhanJ.D.
Founder. Law and real estate
Lawyer, real estate broker and founder of a real estate investment firm.
Over $1 billion in real estate transactions across Danmar Empire and affiliated brokerages to date.
Serial entrepreneur. Teaches the first Oakville classes himself.
Daniel started Genius Learning because the things he uses every day as a lawyer and a broker, how a contract binds, how a mortgage amortises, what a paystub hides, were never taught to him or to anyone he knows at school. The curriculum is written so that a Grade 5 student can start it and a Grade 12 student can finish it with a full financial plan.
The advisory board
Eight people who do for a living what the curriculum teaches: law, finance, accounting, medicine, leadership and policing. Several are parents of students the program is built for.
- Daniel SheikhanJ.D.Founder. Law and real estate
- John ClarksonFinance and executive leadership
- Jeries AlGhawalyExecutive leadership
- Afton SterlingJ.D.Law and regulatory compliance
- Dr. Farbod Bahadori-EsfahaniM.D., FRCPC, FAAPMedicine and education
- Jelena GrkovicCPAFinancial and performance audit
- Fawaz OwaydaLaw enforcement
- Paul ChanCPAAccounting
How we work
- Teachers
- Every class is taught by an Ontario Certified Teacher or a Registered Early Childhood Educator, with a clear vulnerable sector check on file.
- Classrooms
- Private classrooms, ten or fewer students, slides on the wall, paper on the desk.
- Images
- No real photographs of students or classrooms appear on this site. Every image is generated and labelled illustrative.
- Figures
- Every statistic we publish names its source. Round numbers on the page, exact figures in the article.
- Giving
- Every donation is matched and funds tuition for children whose families could not otherwise enrol.