Tag: college

Things I Know 218 of 365: ‘College- and career-ready’ is backwards thinking

I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.

– Carl Sagan

I mentioned a few days ago that I took issue with a couple of the questions asked at our new-student orientation. Not took issue in the torches and pitchforks, storm the castle, sense, but issue just the same.

One of the facts shared with us was the percent of students in the new class who are the first in their families to earn a bachelor’s degree (16%).

To set that in perspective, we were then told that only 27.2% of people in the United States of have a bachelor’s degree. To this, there was an audible “hmmmm.”

When we started discussing things at my table, I was interested in how readily we accepted the notion that a bachelor’s was to be expected, the mark of success or making it or acceptance.

I wondered who else in the tent wondered at the idea that what was likely expected for somewhere near 84% of us was out of reach, had slipped through the fingers or was uninteresting to 72.8% of those in the country.

It started me thinking on where I stand regarding college education.

I read Will’s post to his kids his acceptance of their choices later in life if they choose not to go to college, and I remember thinking how much care his words contained.

It didn’t get me going as to whether or not I would write a similar post if I had kids.

But of course I have had kids. For only 180-days at a time, but they were in my charge just the same.

And it’s interesting how what I wanted for that first class at Sarasota Middle shifted by the time I saw my last classes at SLA.

I hadn’t known enough kids when I started teaching to realize that college wasn’t the path for everyone.

I only knew me and knew that it had always been my path.

With that limited understanding, I applied my logic to my students through my teaching practice. I taught them as though the preparation of school could and should only be geared toward preparing students for college.

In doing so, I underserved and under appreciated those students who were learning and growing into remarkable adults, but who weren’t on a trajectory that would lead them to a bachelor’s degree.

Somehow, they and I were failing. I couldn’t see the flaw in my logic because I didn’t know what I was doing.

By the time I was helping to counsel my last group of kids at SLA, I knew better (though not nearly completely) how to see my students and listen to understand where they were interested in heading.

Yes, the vast majority were on their way to 4-year colleges, and many of them will secure degrees beyond whatever paper I finally settle with as a the terminus for my education.

For those who needed something different, whose paths called for what was other than dorm living, ENG 101 and lecture hall classes, I’d started hearing them and realizing they were heading to lives by way of roads I’d never seen.

That was tough.

Still is.

Yes, I know the financial impact a college degree can have on a person’s lifelong earning potential.

I’ve also seen the emotional and financial impact a degree earned out of obligation and not desire can have on a person’s lifelong living potential.

Much attention is being paid as of late to whether or not our students are college and career ready by the time they graduate from high school.

It seems to me, that perhaps we should be paying attention to making more and more diverse colleges and careers so that they have at least a possible shot of being student ready.

Things I Know 138 of 365: English 101 ain’t got nothing on us

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?

– Langston Hughes

The ENG 101 syllabus of one of my former students states the following:

Students who pass the course will be able to do the following:

  • Use appropriate rhetorical development (such as analysis, comparison/contrast, interpretation and argument) to respond to the central ideas of an assigned text
  • Paraphrase sentences and short passages from reading texts
  • Analyze a written assignment
  • Develop essays of varying length and complexity that incorporate ideas from texts
  • Use a variety of sentence patterns, indicating a generally mature style
  • Evaluate effectiveness of their own writing via feedback from professor, peers and self to produce a rigorous revision
  • Use vocabulary that conveys meaning accurately and appropriately for a college student

Fantastic.

Awesome.

Super-sweet.

The thing is, I send my students out of my classroom with those skills. I send them out of the classroom with more than those skills.

As we fast-approach the end of the school year, my senior students are practicing their ability to analyze texts at their linguistic, semantic, structural and cultural levels and then apply various schools of literary criticism to find deeper meaning.

To their future professors, I say, challenge them.

We have been. It’s fun; trust me.

I’ve read plenty of articles denouncing the abhorrent linguistic skills with which college freshmen enter their university experiences.

Get over it.

Perhaps the problem lies not in the skills of the students but in the work they are being asked to complete.

On this same syllabus, the workload of the course is outlined:

In this class, you will write and revise 5 full-length essays plus write an in-class essay for a final exam. These will range in length from 3 pages (early essays) and gradually lengthen to 5 pages (last take-home essay).

My favorite implication in the above is the idea that an essay of 5 pages in length is somehow superior in content than an essay of 3 pages in length. I love the COSTCO approach to writing in bulk. It’s an excellent lesson to teach our students that more writing equals better writing.

Of particular note is the fact that the learning described in this syllabus will bore students to tears. Many high school teachers have gotten the memo that technology and 21st-century learning open up the ability for our students to learn and produce artifacts of their learning in varied and complex ways. And, we’re doing it while sticking to the content of yesterday as well. My G11 students will have written 12 analytical essays by the end of the year. Each of those papers will have centered around a thesis statement that is unique, inciteful and debatable – not to mention self-created.

Professors should also know they’re working and revising on google docs with peer feedback, building a portfolio of work on which they reflect at the end of each quarter. Their writing process is transparent, collaborative and authentic.

When the syllabus states, “Essays must be submitted to me in paper form (not email)…” I want to email the professor asking, “Why?” I reconsider, remembering this professor’s aversion to such correspondence.

My argument is simply this, whomever is designing the curriculum and pedagogy for the nation’s ENG 101 courses, know that we’ve been bringing our A-game for the last four years, and we’re sending you students who will be expecting the same from you.

Things I Know 11 of 365: College should do college better

Professor: One who speaks in someone else’s sleep.

– Unknown

Art and Society: Theater of the Civil War

Text and Context: Islamic Art and Culture

Traditional and Non-Traditional Grammar

Three courses of my undergraduate studies.

The first two were ordered from the menu of Illinois State University’s General Education program. The third was selected as one of the rhetorical requirements made of an English major.

I selected them because they sounded interesting.

Though I remember scant lessons from each such as my “A” on the paper, “Nouns: More than People, Places, Things an Ideas,” I can’t say that they proved incredibly interesting. They were work, yes, but they didn’t incite my curiosity. It’s a shame, too. I’ve got a pretty wicked curiosity.

College should do college better.

As I write letters of recommendation for our exiting seniors, I want to include a note at the end – just a heads up to whomever inherits our students – “Don’t screw them up.”

After four years of inquiry-driven, project-based learning, our students are ready for the interesting. They are prepared to ask questions and look for answers. They are prepared to do real stuff. They have written grant proposals, interviewed voters, written the histories of their neighborhoods and documented their families’ dearest memories.

Don’t worry about building your new sports complex, your shinier student union, your rec center, your re-sodded quad. Instead, look in your syllabi and ask if, at 18, you’d want to sit and listen to what you have to say.

Don’t mistake me, I’m not going all Mary Poppins here. It doesn’t have to be fun.

It should be, and by God, please make at least a little effort here, interesting.

Some of the best times and biggest mistakes I made in college happened in the offices of the campus paper, The Daily Vidette. What’s more, I didn’t pay tuition to write there. They paid me. It turns out writing for a real audience to inform them and to keep those in power honest drove me to understand the importance of sourcing your information and getting the quotes just right.

It was interesting, and it was important.

If “Don’t screw them up” is too vague, let me be more specific.

Colleges, universities, you don’t own the information anymore.

We’re teaching out students to access it, to analyze it, to ask what they can do with it and then to create with it.
I understand that used to be your job. Well, the first two anyway. You’ve been outsourced.

They’re coming to you hungry, curious and capable. If you assume otherwise, you will lose them. They will see through your undervaluing of their potential and they will lose interest.

We’ll still be down here pushing them up to you, but you’ve got to keep them there.

In order to do that, I think it’s going to take more than promoting your 24-hour Taco Bell.