Today’s Students

During the past four weeks, I have blogged about the who, what and where of education. In my final blog, I would like to discuss the people at the center of all this debate, students.  Educators today face students who demand more than tedious memory exercises.  Lectures must be interactive and engaging.  Today’s students are assaulted, nearly from birth, with text messaging, Facebook, TV, Twitter, Myspace, blogs, podcasts, iTunes, and the latest apps.  These students do not have the same attention span because they are the tweet-text-info junkie generation or the fact that so many students have ADD/ADHD, these combined make it impossible to keep today’s students engaged.  Teachers today are in direct competition with a world full of distractions.

I use the 50 minute rule in the classes I teach, 50 minutes of classroom work and then 10 minutes of free time.  This is for a class comprised of 19 to 25 year olds.   Preston J. 2013, states that for the K-12 instructors, the attention span of students “is the average age in your class and then add 5 minutes” (par. 3).  After this amount of time, no real learning is achieved; therefore, a 5 minute break is needed to refocus the students. Faced with a shorter attention span of students and a growing demand for accelerated, progressive curriculum's, a teacher today is ask to do more than their predecessors.   

Expectations in Education

http://www.state.tn.us/education/core_values.shtml

Two weeks ago I discussed the continuing struggles Tennessee is having implementing a school reform plan called the Common Core.  Despite the backing of a popular Governor who comes from the majority party, Republican and the nearly universal support of school superintendents and teachers, we are left with one burning question, what’s all the fuss?  There may be multiple answers to this question, but it boils down to one thing, expectations.  Stakeholders in education are giving and receiving conflicting expectations.  For example, the state of Tennessee reports on their web site, “We believe in the potential of all Tennessee students to reach high levels of academic achievement.  We believe that, in collaboration with our colleagues across the state, we can and will build a system that helps our students meet their potential.” (tdoe, 2014)  This is listed as an “Optimism” core value.  However, President Obama stated on many occasions that school should prepare students for college or the work force.  As an example, at Graham Road Elementary school in Falls Church, Virginia, the president stated, “we encouraged states to adopt more challenging standards that will actually prepare our kids for college and their careers.” (Obama, 2010)  So what is expectation?  Help student reach their potential or prepare them for college/workforce.  I believe this is more than semantics, as we raise expectation for our students we need to define those expectations.  Reforms like the common core will only be palatable if/when the expectations are understood.