I'm Re-Energized / Inspired

I read an article in The Atlantic January/February 2014 issue titled “How to Escape the Community-College Trap” and as I thoroughly enjoy reading anything having to do with any level of education, I dove in with great enthusiasm. Sure enough, I was not disappointed. The hook at the beginning of the article let me know what to expect, “Almost half of all U.S. undergraduates are enrolled in community college. Yet most of them will never earn a degree - and hardly any will do so quickly. Here’s how to fix that.”

For community college, those of us who live in Quebec, Canada can substitute the phrase CEGEP. It is not that I know for a fact that our CEGEP’s are not meeting the needs of our young adults, rather that I am fairly certain that our young adults are generally poorly equipped to do well at CEGEP and to take best advantage of their CEGEP experience.

The article examined the needs of the vast majority of post secondary students, that is, students going on to train and learn for a career after high school, and found that in many cases these students don’t have what it takes to truly succeed: “ …students, especially the least prepared ones, don’t just need to learn math or science; they need to learn how to navigate academic and institutional challenges more broadly, and how to plot a course - daily, weekly, monthly - toward long-term success.”

 This is exactly what my program of independent learning seeks to give children. Teach children how to learn independently. Teach children how to set goals, choose a path to reach a goal and then assess progress. Teach children to ask questions and find answers. Teach children how to self-advocate. Teach children how to motivate themselves.

Over and over again I read of the need for self-motivation on the part of our young adults. This can best be taught when they are about 10 years old and then further developed through their adolescent and young adult years.

I am both heartened and energized by the message of this article in The Atlantic. I am heartened because I feel that my sense of the needs of our young people is corroborated by the opinions and findings from fact based studies presented in the article. This tells me that I am on the right track in proposing that our children learn how to learn independently and how to set goals and meet them. I think that these are key skills for all of us to acquire and practice. So, then I feel energized to make this happen for the children who live near me. I’d like to at least be able to offer this approach as an alternative for these children.

Not so long ago, I was talking to a parent of a child preparing to finish high school and go on to CEGEP. For many of the young people in Sutton and environs, that means being away from the guidance and support of parents as well. It is doubly important for these youngsters that they be prepared. This parent was very anxious that her child was perhaps less than well prepared for the CEGEP experience. I’m sure that many parents worry about how their children will fare in the post high school world. This is exactly the kind of concern that my approach seeks to provide answers for.

I’ve seen articles about learning online, about working from home and now about community college students and what all of these articles have in common is a concern that young adults don’t have the skills that they need to be self-motivated, self-directed, self-assessing and so on. These are skills that our school system does not build in students. Quite the contrary, actually. The classroom experience teaches and reinforces the message that teachers know and kids don’t and that kids need to follow the guidance of teachers so that they can eventually know. Kids need to be good at following direction and should not ‘think for themselves.’ This isn’t a stated goal of classroom teachers, but it is a message that children receive on a daily basis. “Do as you are told. Listen well and follow directions. Conform and don’t think outside the box.” Is this what we want to be teaching children?

I worked with a student in grade 8 who didn’t want to do any extra math work, even though she was failing math and really needed the remedial work, because “that’s not what my teacher told me to do.” I would love to work with children of all ages to help them to understand that they are responsible for their learning and that the teacher can be seen as a support person rather than as the one who decides what you will learn and when and how….

I can see, in my imagination, a child of about fourteen or fifteen years of age, choosing to learn about, for example, forestry or project management, to fulfill his own interest and his own career ideas and ambitions. Imagine this child with the skills and confidence to go ahead with a project to learn about project management. He might research the topic online. He might find a number of resources, including a book or two on the subject. He might also interview a person who has organized a large project. The Brome County Fair comes to mind. This is a very big event that requires a great deal of planning. The annual Eco-Sphere Fair is another big event that someone is planning and managing every year. And that someone probably has a great deal to teach someone who knows how to ask good questions.

Now, multiply this one wonderfully self-motivated child, by twenty, and they begin to inform and enthuse their peers. “Wow. You did that? Maybe I can learn about what I really want to know about. I want to know about dogs and breeding and caring for dogs and veterinary care. Maybe I can learn about that!”

Imagine that these adolescent boys and girls know what they love and know how to find out about what they love. They are not bored. They are not alienated, nor do they feel powerless. They are engaged in the creation of a life that will enthuse and fascinate them and ultimately a life that will fill them with joy.

This is what I have in mind.

It’s not just that they don’t flunk out of CEGEP or community college. It’s not just that they are able to do well in high school. It is much more than that. It is that they are empowered to live the life of their dreams. They learn the value of learning, and at the same time, they learn how to learn. This is life-long empowerment.