Bring Back Vocational Courses and Schools!

As an Exceptional Children’s teacher, I see students struggle daily with reading, writing, and math.  All of these students have struggled throughout their entire educational career and many of them have been retained at least once.  Because of their struggles in the classroom, many students become more frustrated as they enter high school.  Due to the emphasis placed on reading, writing, and math, these students who struggle are left behind.  Their educational needs are not met and they become frustrated because there are little or no vocational courses offered at their school.  Many students, including E.C. students, are weak academically, but are strong vocationally.  These are the students who can take an engine apart and put it back together, but cannot comprehend a paragraph.  These are the students who would rather work outside all day with their hands than sit in a classroom all day and be taught material that they will never use outside of the classroom doors.  As the students continue to take classes that they do not understand and as their educational needs are not met, student frustration levels continue to increase.  Due to this frustration, many drop out of school and take low paying jobs.

I propose that we increase the number of vocational courses offered in the schools and bring vocational schools back into education.  Currently, our education system places emphasis on preparing students for college so they become future leaders of America.  But let’s face it; not all students are cut out to go to college.  Why not emphasize the strengths of our students instead of emphasizing their weaknesses?  Why not give students opportunities to tap into their strengths and learn a skill or trade that they can use once they graduate high school?   Yes, we need students who are equipped to go to college and become leaders of our country.  But we also need brick masons, plumbers, electricians, and mechanics.  I believe that by offering students more options than the traditional high school route, students would remain in school longer, graduate, and become productive members of society. 

Field Trips Are Learning Experiences

As the government continues to place more emphasis on testing and accountability in the classroom, less emphasis is placed on learning and growing as an individual. Students are no longer allowed the opportunity to experience things that are not listed in the standard course of study and are expected to learn everything within the four walls of a classroom. Cuts in school and classroom funding have limited what resources are available to students. At South Davidson Middle School, we like to think outside of the box and our teaching is not confined to just the classroom. That is why we take our 8th graders on a field study to Wilmington each fall. This field study is not your typical field trip in which the students go off for a few hours to visit a new place and have no idea how it connects to what they are studying. Our field study begins early on in the semester. We begin introducing the field study the first day of school by talking about where we are going and how it relates to what we will be studying over the course of the year. Incorporated into the study are math, science, social studies, language arts, and technology. By the end of the fall semester, students can explain in detail how the field study is related to the content they have learned in the 8th grade.

Our day begins at 5:00 am with students arriving to school to eat breakfast and load the buses for our adventure to Wilmington. Students are often excited and have slept very few hours when they arrive at school. After 5 hours of traveling, we arrive at the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher. A majority of our students have never been to an aquarium and do not exactly know what to expect. Here they are allowed to observe alligators, seahorses, jellyfish, and other items on exhibit. After we visit the aquarium, we move on to Fort Fisher and learn how the fort was instrumental during the Civil War. This visit allows them to see with their own eyes what we have been studying in the classroom and provides then with a better understanding.

Once we leave Ft. Fisher, we take the students to a public beach for 30-45 minutes. One would think that most, if not all of our students have visited the beach, but they have not. Usually we have around 10-15 students who have never visited the beach. The look on their faces and in their eyes when they see the beach for the first time is priceless. This makes all of the planning and hard work for this trip worth it! When our time is up at the beach, we then drive into Wilmington and visit the Battleship USS North Carolina. Here they learn about the battleship and what technology was used when the battleship was in operation during WWII. After our visit at the battleship is over, we begin our long journey home and arrive back at school around 10:00 pm.

In the following weeks after the field study, our students design a newsletter in which they write brief articles that describe their experiences during the field study and explain what they learned about the different sites we visited. The students are also allowed to use 2-3 pictures they took while in Wilmington and place them in their newsletters. Once the newsletters are scored, students are given the newsletters back so they can keep them as a memento of the trip. Students thoroughly enjoy going to Wilmington and it is an experience that they talk about all year long.

Field studies are an important part of learning. Students are allowed to see and experience things that they may not normally do in their everyday lives. As the government continues to cut spending on education, it is necessary that we, as teachers, rally for our students and find every opportunity to expose our students to experiences that they can learn from and that they will never forget.

Do Five Days Really Matter?

The Senate recently passed a law that would increase the number of required instructional days from 180 to 185.  This change in the school calendar would reduce the number of teacher workdays and applies to the 2011-2012 school year.   The purpose behind this law is so that students can better compete with those from other countries, such as China, who spend 200 or more days a year in school.

This change impacts all facets of a school system, from staff development availability to additional transportation costs.  By increasing the school calendar to 185 days, five teacher workdays would be eliminated.  Teacher workdays are critical and allow teachers to collaborate with others, grade papers, prepare lessons, and attend staff development sessions.  Beginning the 2012-2013 school year, all schools in North Carolina will be following the Common Core Standards and staff development is necessary during the school year to ensure that educators understand the new standards and are prepared for the change.  If teacher workdays are eliminated, how are teachers going to be able to effectively plan and teach the students of North Carolina?  Students who already lag behind other states in reading, writing, math, and science.  Teachers are already asked to do so much with so little and eliminating five teacher workdays would be kicking them while they are already down.

Increasing the number of instructional days also makes an enormous impact on the budgets of each school system.  In Guilford County alone, it would cost an additional $924,000 to transport students for an additional week of school.  And in Randolph County, it would cost an additional $125,000 to transport students.  These figures do not take into account the daily cost to provide lunch and breakfast to the students.  Due to the conditions of the current state budget, each school system has already had to eliminate teacher and teacher assistant positions and cut back on programs and resources that are available to students.  If the systems cannot afford to pay their teachers and staff how are they going to afford additional costs that the extra five school days will incur? 

All 115 of the school districts across the state have already set their calendars for the upcoming school year and have planned staff development on teacher workdays.  Because of this, school systems are allowed to apply for a waiver for the five additional instructional days.  The waiver process requires school systems to submit a plan to use the five workdays for staff development on the new essential standards and Common Core standards.

Obviously, the powers that be did not take into consideration how increasing the school year would affect each school system.  One would think that research would be done prior to passing this law and teachers and school superintendents would be asked their opinions.  But one has to remember that those who make the laws that impact education have probably not stepped back into a classroom since the day they graduated.

 

My first blog

Here I am posting my first blog.  I never thought I would do this and here I am.  I can't wait to learn about the ways I can use this tool in my classroom and as an administrator.