Unnecessary Stress. . . I have been helping a young lady learn marketing since her freshman year three years ago. She was not enrolled in my classes this year. In the previous years she had fun exercising her imagination while proving an alacrity for listening and learning. More importantly she has a knack for making decisions, leading teams and getting things done. One week into this year she was in my room wanting to talk. As we got into it, she expressed how she was concerned that she had bitten off more than she could chew in terms of academic workload, her fall course load was four AP courses, only one of which she was truly interested. Gulp, my heart sank as she asked for advice. We worked with guidance and replaced an AP with Marketing Advanced Studies Honors, a very hands on class. There she teamed up with a sophomore on a DECA written event. She and her teammate worked their butts off to represent themselves and Patriot DECA admirably all the way to International Competition in Atlanta. She also acted as an officer where she lead preparation for our chapter’s competitors, 48 of whom were called to State stage and 24 of whom we took to Atlanta. So here she is taking three AP’s, plus an Honors level course in which she is leading, planning, organizing, overcoming setbacks, researching, writing, presenting, organizing, traveling. Wait, didn’t she say she was stressed out with too much to DO? No, she said she had too many AP courses. Though she is great academically, she, like many others, excels when she is pursuing a passion of her choice with passion and applying her knowledge in a creative way (@Dintersmith PEAK). She has a passion for perfection, a willingness to take risks and to learn from failure. She likes to do things and she is damn good at it. She did not make stage in Atlanta. But she came back and ran for and won office again. After three years she is seventh in the class of 2019, has straight A’s and a weighted GPA of 4.5. Her one shortcoming, she is too hard on herself. We’ll have to work on that next year, her senior year. AP for the sake of AP It was our final homeroom of 2018. I was talking with a couple of girls I’d known since their freshman year and the first day of our new school. One had wished to take my entrepreneurship class, but had not enrolled in the prerequisite. She ended up with an AP she didn’t want, but she “needed the bump in the GPA”. I hadn’t seen them for two weeks because of AP testing. The other had taken a personal finance class with me. I could tell from looking at them they were tired and stressed this last Wednesday of the school year. One commented, “I really hate history, but I took APUSH because it was an AP. I had no fun and I can’t tell you one thing I learned in APUSH.” That semester she earned three A’s, interior design, English and Visual Arts. She has earned a high C in APUSH, a class she cares nothing about. The other commented on her APES class, “I have no interest in environmental science, whatsoever. I took it for the AP”. She too did OK. She has an interest in biomedical technology and took two CTE courses and can't stop talking about them. VERY COOL! Tests, tests and more tests I was putting my seventh grader to bed for the last Tuesday of the school year in which he would have to have lights out by 9:30. He wanted to watch the hockey game. “Why do I have to go to bed? I want to watch the rest of the hockey game.” “No”, I replied, “you have to wake up refreshed for the EOG’s.” His emphatic response was, “EOG’s are stupid; they’ve already given us tons of tests on what we are supposed to learn! What’s the point of giving us a five times longer test on the same stuff?” I couldn’t argue with that logic; plus the hockey game was more interesting, for sure. The Junior year Today, an outstanding person, DECA member and student leader whom I have known and worked with for three years was in my room for lunch. She and others were talking calculus. I printed out a page from Ted Dintersmith’s book, What School Could Be in which he discussed the merits of Statistics, applicable math that helps you think, analyze and evaluate. Ted does not see the need for teaching students repetitive skills that can be accomplished on technology, like calculus. Just then a statistics teacher came into see me. She agreed wholeheartedly and the group discussed the merits of different math courses. Then the bell rang, ending lunch. Sorry, no time for deeper discovery, we have to march off to our next drill and test. I did get the five-minute-passing to walk the student to class and explain how to make the decision; which would she like best and use the most after school? She wants to go into marketing. No brainer for me after 12 years in the field and holder of two degrees including an MBA. She returned after school. She was not there to talk calculus. The conversation turned to how tough the junior year was. Tests, mini-projects with little meaning, SAT’s, GPAS and general stress and fatigue. She showed me some kind of Instagram from another student I had taught twice. In it she said how tired and stressful the junior year was. She received twenty-two amens from other students, many of whom I have taught. The exhausted emerging leader looked at me while holding back a yawn and said, “No one looks forward to school anymore.” Is this what we want her, and others', senior superlative to be? My vision is for all students, at every age, to look forward to going to school and learning. My vision is for classrooms of all ages to focus on satisfying curiosity, fostering creative confidence and developing self-directed, reflective, lifelong learners. My vision is for students’ to experience their education, not to be tested to boredom, depression, or worst. Hands-on learning turns minds on. Leave a Reply. |
Author: Dan Jackson
Experienced Reflective Learner and Strategic Thinker with an ongoing track record of of innovative, adaptive leadership in education and business management. Archives
December 2019
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