One of my students approached me a few days before our three day weekend with a business card. “Can you call my boss?” he asked me. I stared at him for a beat with my “whaaa?” face. “She won’t officially hire me until I’m passing your class.”
“Fantastic!” I thought to myself. This kid has under a 50% and he wants me to call his boss? My student received a 30% on a research report he barely wrote back in November and still has yet to rewrite it. Perfect timing for this request! “How’s this weekend?”
“I’m booked,” he replied. BOOKED?! Child, you are FIFTEEN YEARS OLD! What kind of fifteen year old is booked?!
I took a deep breath.
I fought for words.
“Well, when do you want to start working?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Then get me that essay as soon as possible.”
Regardless of my less than stellar comeback, I couldn’t believe it. He was “booked”?! This is what education is coming to. Children who are failing their classes even when being given the chance to make up their work, with no point deductions for lateness and failure the first time around, are too busy to focus on school. They have made other plans. School is not any type of priority and in three days he can find absolutely no time to rewrite or add to his report, even when a job was on the line. Amazing.
What values are we teaching our future when school and education come last?
And then I ask myself…
What lessons do we need to take away from our students when school becomes so unimportant that it is placed last?
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Mind of Minutia
I know it has been a long time since my last post. I have found myself in a state of disillusionment with my job, my goals, and my purpose. Perhaps that is when I should have turned to writing first, but it seems that I was so utterly confused that my thoughts seemed to be making me speechless. Below is one of the many thoughts I was finally able to turn into words.
I met today with one of my students at the public library. She could only meet for one hour, though, because she had practice. Because of an earlier field trip, I was able to drive her to practice. As I was heading back towards school she told me, “No, we’re at the park.” I realized at that point that she was not headed to an athletic practice, but to practice for Powder Puff, the annual football game of senior girls versus junior girls. And I found myself utterly disappointed.
Our students seem to be growing more and more concerned with things that do not matter in the long run. Sure she was showing dedication to her class and the event, but when the event ends, what will she have gained? With an athletics team the student works towards an ultimate goal, small goals, and learns valuable lessons in failure, teamwork, leadership, success and humility. A team can work towards a season filled with success and championships, or just improvement. But with a one time event? What is the ultimate goal? What are the students working towards? What long term lessons are they learning? Are they building character? The list of questions that stem from my confusion goes on and on.
It is as though our students have no clue what long term goals are, what builds character, leadership and responsibility. The time and energy focused are less and less on academics, clubs, athletics and school organizations, but on somewhat trivial pieces of high school social activities. Our students are filling their minds with minutia. They have a hard time completing simple addition problems in their head, but can tell you all the benefits of having a PS3 gaming system over the Wii. They are not aware of their incomplete and run-on sentences, but know the relationship ups and downs of the latest Hollywood couple. And this knowledge is not even useful in building healthy relationships or positive social skills. If anything, it seems to be making our students more apathetic, anti-social and shallow. How do we, as educators, use the constraints of state standards to pull our students back in and show them the joy in being a deeper human being?
I met today with one of my students at the public library. She could only meet for one hour, though, because she had practice. Because of an earlier field trip, I was able to drive her to practice. As I was heading back towards school she told me, “No, we’re at the park.” I realized at that point that she was not headed to an athletic practice, but to practice for Powder Puff, the annual football game of senior girls versus junior girls. And I found myself utterly disappointed.
Our students seem to be growing more and more concerned with things that do not matter in the long run. Sure she was showing dedication to her class and the event, but when the event ends, what will she have gained? With an athletics team the student works towards an ultimate goal, small goals, and learns valuable lessons in failure, teamwork, leadership, success and humility. A team can work towards a season filled with success and championships, or just improvement. But with a one time event? What is the ultimate goal? What are the students working towards? What long term lessons are they learning? Are they building character? The list of questions that stem from my confusion goes on and on.
It is as though our students have no clue what long term goals are, what builds character, leadership and responsibility. The time and energy focused are less and less on academics, clubs, athletics and school organizations, but on somewhat trivial pieces of high school social activities. Our students are filling their minds with minutia. They have a hard time completing simple addition problems in their head, but can tell you all the benefits of having a PS3 gaming system over the Wii. They are not aware of their incomplete and run-on sentences, but know the relationship ups and downs of the latest Hollywood couple. And this knowledge is not even useful in building healthy relationships or positive social skills. If anything, it seems to be making our students more apathetic, anti-social and shallow. How do we, as educators, use the constraints of state standards to pull our students back in and show them the joy in being a deeper human being?
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