As promised, a few more tips for improving our education system…
4. Change the methods. Sitting and listening to someone talk. Bo-ring. How many adults would actually pay attention the entire time? Now cut that number in half and you’ll have the approximate number of students who are actually paying attention to a lecture. If it’s dull, you better believe their brains are elsewhere. There’s a lot going on for teens these days. They have a lot to deal with. If you want them to be engaged, you need to make it relevant and interesting.
So dump the worksheets. Toss the thirty-minute lecture. And meet your students where they are. Go into their world and make the subject applicable to their lives. (more…)
I have ideas about things. You probably know that by now. I’m a big thinker, a problem-solver. And if you want to talk about a problem that needs to be solved, it’s the education system in the U.S.
We’ve fallen behind our European and Asian cousins, and we’ve stayed there. Not cool. But the powers-that-be seem to be at a loss for how to fix it. We’ve instituted programs that have fallen flat. Money has been wasted. But we’re doing the same thing and expecting different results. How ’bout we change things?
I’m taking my org. management degree and applying it to the education system. I’ve been pondering this problem for a while, and here are a few changes, mostly aimed at high school education, that I think would get us started in the right direction:
1. Pay teachers more.I know, right? Seems like a no-brainer. (more…)
I’ve decided to add a new categories of posts, called “What not to say…” It’s like a dorky writer version of What Not to Wear. (Yes, your friends have reported you. We have evidence of your actions. You’re about to get ambushed.)
And because so many people can relate to being introverted, I’m tackling that one first. So here we go. Here’s what not to say to an introvert:
“Don’t you like people?” Um you, right now, not so much. But in general, yes. Our desire to embrace solitude has nothing to do with a dislike of people. But we’d rather hang out with smaller groups and reserve plenty of “me time” so we can process everything. It’s hard for extraverts to understand that. For them, more people = more fun. For us, more people = more stress. (more…)
I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t some covert op I had planned beforehand. In fact, there was nothing covert about it.
My husband and I met up with a group of his co-workers to check out The Avengers (an excellent movie, by the way). And like a good little planner, I figured I’d stop by the ladies’ room before the movie. As we were standing near the ticket line, I spotted the restroom across the way, near the concessions. So I strolled over there (took me about five minutes). On the way, I passed a guy sitting by a table. I made eye contact, smiled, and kept walking.
When I came out of the bathroom, the group stopped by concessions and then we headed in to the movie. Once we sat down, I realized… we hadn’t shown anyone our tickets. (more…)
When I was 7, I got my first pair of glasses. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. When your parents and grandparents all have less-than-perfect vision, no one’s shocked that you need glasses.
I married a man with perfect vision. He can open his eyes in the morning and see clearly. It’s annoying. Especially when he says, “Really? You can’t see that?” No dear. Without some form of vision correction, my world is a bunch of fuzzy shapes. Thank you for reminding me how well you can see everything.
And it occurred to me all the things I’ve learned over my nearly 20 years of vision correction. So here it is. A few things we “four eyes” know that you perfect vision folk will never understand. Life lessons that came from our imperfect eyeballs. (more…)