Over the past 5 weeks or so I've been in a program, CE City through the College of Creative Studies and Campbell Ewald, an advertising agency. As problem solvers, our goal was to come up with a commercial or public service announcement that addresses and encourages fathers to have a bigger impact on their child's life, pushing the idea of "Taking time to be a dad today". Last Wednesday my group along with 6 others presented in front of a crowd of people and judges. After the judges came together, they elaborated on the different commercials shown. After a nerve wrecking 20 minutes, they announced the winners. Not only was I surprised to hear our group be called, I was extremely proud and excited to have been in the program. Attached is the actual animatic we showed.
There's something I need to get off of my chest, questions I feel someone must ask. Why do we continue to hold such low expectations for our youth, but indirectly say that the expectations are high? Maybe, I'm saying this wrong, but it seems as if our message is incorrect. Why do we expect average and below average? Why do we give student loads of simple, tedious, low-stimulating work, in hopes that they'll improve. Improve what? Improve their abilities to recite, and copy? How is that beneficial? We say we want student to pass, to "succeed", when success is not what's going on.
There is a big difference in earning a grade and just receiving one. Unfortunately, that fine line is non-existent. How can this change? How can I change it? How can we change it? Let's start my encouraging youth, and instead of teaching the "ability" let's learn the SKILL. What does that mean, you ask? It means, lets empower our youth, the future leaders of tomorrow. Teaching youth to learn the skills, like analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing and not opening a textbook and copying it onto a sheet of wide ruled paper. Instead of sitting in a class where you learn by repeating what you hear, lets go to a class where we apply our real life experiences into the lesson.
Why not engage students in things that are beneficial. Don't know how to? Why not ask the ones who are receiving the lesson? Does that seem like a good way to start? I definitely think so. If my random rant was annoying for you, then I'm sorry, and if it doesn't apply to you then re-think and re-evaluate your surroundings. Think about what you've read and ask yourself, is it worth learning how to recite, when the SKILL is what determines the successfulness of your future.
>> Check out this documentary on education in the U.S., Race to Nowhere.
*This post is LONG, overdue I know. Consider it Friday's post.
