Sunday, February 22, 2009
"Did You Know" Video
I have seen this video before and absolutely love it. It really makes one think. My initial reaction was fear for my own children and for my husband and family. My brother and husband are in IT and they are experiencing layoffs all around them as jobs are outsourced to India. If you haven’t kept current or paid attention to where the cheese is going, what kind of job do you get in your 50’s? Sometimes I think preparing students for the 21st century is not that different than preparing them for the 20th century. Intelligence, hard work and good luck have always been what makes someone successful, and I don’t know how much this will change. There is very little I learned in high school or college for that matter that prepared me for my profession. In order to survive and thrive, students will need to go the extra mile, be passionate about their work and independently learn what they don’t already know. The question is, how do you teach intelligence, motivation and an ethic of hard work? As a reading specialist, I see the need for strong literacy skills and a strong need for student motivation. If you are not intrinsically motivated, you will be left behind because motivation, passion and curiosity cannot easily be taught. Who’s scared? Kids starting college right now. They’ve been told that by the time they graduate, what they have learned will be outdated. As far as excellent teaching goes, it is possible to be an excellent teacher without using technology because current curriculum does not require it. But in reality, the answer is no. My experience is that elementary teachers, young and old, are verbally oriented and afraid of technology.
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I absolutely agree with your question, "what kind of job do you get in your 50s?" My father is experiencing this as he has been unemployed for over a year now after his entire department of 55 people was laid off in January of 2008 due to outsourcing. He is 58 years old...who is going to hire him when he will require a salary of over $60,000 based on his experience, when companies can hire a recent college grad to start at the bottom of the pay scale? His lack of technological knowledge cost him a couple of jobs he interviewed for. None of the computer programs used today were around in the 60s and 70s when he was in school! The trend certainly has been in favor of pushing out older workers in favor of younger ones for the purpose of saving money. Are companies shooting themselves in the foot by doing this?
ReplyDeleteIntelligence, hard work and good luck have always been what makes someone successful is what you wrote and I agree....but you also need to know what to work hard in! Working hard doesn't always equate to working smart!
ReplyDelete"Working hard doesn't always equate to working smart" I definitely agree with this statement. We all know a mediocre teacher who works his/her tail off to be mediocre at best. Their work ethic is amazing but how and what they are working hard on is not producing great teaching. A teacher must be a leader and facilitate students not only to be motivated and to work hard but to work smart. A teacher can do this by teaching a student to think and question well. A lot of time we spend doing work. How often do we forget to reflect on why something is done and if there is a better way of doing something.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your assessment of the intangibles and that teaching students in the 21st century isn't very different from teaching in the previous century. I think most people agree they learned more in the first two months of their profession than they did in 4 years of college. However, I also agree with Prof B and Jim - hard work isn't always smart work. I see this time and time again; students feel they deserve an A because they spent 3 hours doing something with little regard for the actual quality of their work. Time doesn’t equal quality.
ReplyDeleteAnd regarding "Who's scared?", the kids entering college now will probably be entering an economy on a rapid ascent - it's the kids graduating this spring that should be concerned - high skill sets required and no demand.
I see many students who are these days extrinsically motivated because this is how they are brought up in their families and in their younger education days. We are pushing for extrinsic motivation throughout their school careers, we see this by simply grades, a students when they receive a grade is extrinsically motivated even for the smallest thing as to see a sticker on their paper if they receive a high grade. Most teachers and parents do not give much thought to if they are giving a student or child something as a reward, these students are always going to be looking for this reward at the end of their goal or project. If a student does not have internal motivation this student will more than likely stop achieving the skill or goal if they are not going to get their reward at the end. We need to look further into our teaching and see if we are actually rewarding these students intrinsically or extrinsically and what is going to be the later effect on this, what is going to be the consequence 20 years down the road?
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