Education Short List

It may not be the most PC thing to say, but here it is. Not everyone was meant to go to college. Some people are really happy not going to school or being in a big corporation. There are also lots of people who are self-made who never receive a high formal education. Unfortunately those percentages are decreasing, as the escalating pressure to receive an a degree (and now even an advanced degree) rises.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, that as society puts more demands on people to go to college for a Bachelor’s Degree, and a Master’s (even a Ph.D.) that the tuition for this amazing experience and education continues to rise as well. So, as more individuals feel the societal pressure to attend a university, there is an insurmountable pile of debt attached to that. Even though a person who goes to college may be doing so to increase their chances of getting a better paying job, it can be counteracted by the tens of thousands of dollars spent on their education. I am a perfect example of this, as I went to school for seven years to not be in education but to have the 90,000 debt associated with wanting to be an educator.

Here is an article I found that discusses the rising molehill of debt new graduates have to pay. And really, what do they have to show for it?

http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2009/12/student_loan_debt_climbs_to_re.html

In middle school, high school, and college – each class, each day requires students to take notes. If you are in a class that you think is boring, frustrating, or dull then being engaged enough can be that much more tasking. OR, if you’ve never really learned how to jot down class notes, then you will have a hard time even figuring out where to begin.

These reasons coupled with the frustration expressed by my students led me to create the 3*2*1*1 notetaking method. If this is followed daily with each class taken, then students are more likely to be engaged with what is being learned, able to recall more of their lessons at a later date, have better notes for later review, and feel more mentally prepared for upcoming papers, quizzes, and tests.

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–3 – write down 3 problems, examples, mini topics, or interesting points from class
3 things that were taught. Each of these should be at least six words; and are directly related to the subject, the text, or lecture from the teacher.
(Ex. William Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, last play written. Weird monster character in it. Teacher gave out parts to read in play.)

- – 2- write down 2 comments, questions, or answers to questions that you gave in class
This part is extra important when you know you receive points for participation in class
(Ex. I asked if David Bowie was the first person to ever bring theatrics to musical performances. Told teacher that there is no exact date for Shakespeare’s birth)

– 1- one point that he would like clarification on
Something that didn’t quite make perfect sense; and by knowing it, it would make the learning that much easier, clearer, or more interesting
Doesn’t necessarily mean you have to ask an instructor the answer, could be a friend, family member, or colleaguge.
(Ex. confused on why people don’t know who Shakespeare is.)

- – 1 – the one big thing that you would take out of the lesson for that day.
This should be three words or less. It would be the answer to, “So how was area studies today?”
(Ex. David Bowie is cool. We read The Tempest).

If you have specific notes or guidelines that your instructor wants you to follow, then obviously do so. If that is the case, you can skip the “3″ component and continue with the rest. Also, this strategy does not include taking chapter textbook notes. There is another format, that will be discussed later on, that goes best with that type of structure.

It’s a given, that in school there are tests to take.

An overwhelming majority of test-takers feel varying levels of building anxiety within the 36-48 hours preceding the exam. To help alleviate some of that nervous energy, educators provide their students with study skills, test prep packets, and time; in order to better prepare them. Another important aspect to the test preparation, one that is often overlooked, is what studying students should do with that last bit of time before an exam. That is the focus in this article.

It’s what I like to call, “A little R & R.” No, not ‘reading and arithmetic;’ instead, it’s rest and relaxation.

This part of the studying regiment is focused on what to do the day before and day of an exam. For most students who are getting ready for an exam, they utilize the last two days as a cram session (this is especially true of high-school and college students); in the hopes that last bits of information will be absorbed in their memory. Unfortunately, this isn’t accurate. Research shows that by preparing in advance and studying over a longer period of time, that a person is better enabled to recall more information with greater accuracy. Plus, what the person studying rarely realizes is that cramming information into the memory with such a short amount of time is actually counterproductive to the learning process.

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Let’s start with the day before the exam. The morning and early afternoon before should be the test should be the last time that you look at your notes. This should be the time when you are actually talking out loud to yourself about your notes; read your notes, ask yourself questions. By reading aloud, you are giving your brain another way to record and remember the information. Studying should stop by 3pm. The rest of the day should be spent relaxing; read, go for a walk, watch a movie, hang out with friends. {If the test you are taking the next day is, say, the SATs you can spend more time talking about the concepts of your exam with friends and family – but no actual studying}. For dinner be sure to eat a healthy and satisfying meal, no alcohol, excess sugar, or caffeine.

In fact, there should be no alcohol consumed at all that day; and caffeine and sugar should not be consumed after 12pm the day before. Avoiding alcohol seems like an obvious decision; but limiting caffeine and sugar are sometimes confusing to people. The reason you don’t want to ingest large amounts of these three is because the caffeine and sugar have a tendency to make people jittery and stay up longer. Add that with the anxiety of taking an exam, and it’s almost impossible to get a solid night’s sleep.

The evening before be sure to go to bed early. The human brain and body need at least 7.5 hours of sleep an evening. To help you calculate the time you should be going to bed, consider these factors. What time is your test tomorrow? How long will it take you to get there? Be sure to include time for breakfast. Once you know what time you should be asleep, two hours before that begin to winding down your day. You know the ways in which you relax best, so do those activities; read a book in bed, drink a cup of decaf tea, take a hot shower or bath, etc.

The morning of your test is here! Again, remember you want to wake up with plenty of time to eat breakfast and arrive to your test. This morning you need a breakfast that is going to carry you through whatever morning activities you have up until the end of your test. No coffee, caffeine, or sugar today – instead, focus on a meal that has plenty of protein and starchy carbs. I recommend having a bagel sandwich with egg and cheese on it. Also, your morning drink should include juice, water, or milk. Again, the goal here is to give your body the fuel it needs for a healthy day.

The day of your test, don’t study or look at your notes. By doing this, you won’t be remembering anything important. Instead, you’ll be psyching yourself out of what you do know and worrying about what it is that you think you forgot to study for. It’s very counterproductive. What can help you is to find someone you know who is also taking the same exam and talk about it with them. This activity will get you more into the conversation and less into worrying.

For those students taking a longer more comprehensive exam, such as the SATs or finals, there are a few different steps to take. Be sure to wear comfortable clothing, in layers, so you can add or remove clothing according to your body temperature. Also, bring several pencils and hair rubber bands for longer hair. It’s a good idea to not wear a watch and leave your cell phone in your car or backpack. When you are taking the test, be sure to give yourself a break, literally; take at least one bathroom break during the exam – even if you don’t need to use the restroom. Just by going outside of the testing area, walking around, and breathing – you are mentally making yourself ready to complete your test.

All of these preparation steps are meant to encourage your body and brain to be as relaxed as possible. By following these guidelines for the two days before a test, you will be reducing the anxiety you feel. And by reducing your nervousness about the test, you will allow yourself to perform better on it.

Another article that I wrote earlier, Learning is like Eating a Steak, gives pointers on how to study and learn better. That article focuses more on the learning process; whereas this one focuses on those last crucial hours before an exam.

http://educationshortlist.com/index.php?s=learning+like+steak&Search.x=0&Search.y=0&Search=Search

Remember, when we were kids and we had so many ways to learn and play, thereby allowing us to learn even more through play?

As a teacher of elementary-aged students, I was encouraged to utilize a variety of techniques, strategies, and paraphernalia, to help my students learn. For example, when they were learning about the history of Lewis and Clark – we didn’t just read stories. We went outside and looked for wildlife that they would have seen, cook recipes of food they ate, made up our own stories and journals, etc. When it came time to tackle math, we used counting blocks to help us add or to make fractions, we talked about it, did problems together, and worked in small groups, etc. It was fun, it was varied – it was learning.

So why is it different for adults? Or even our high-schoolers and undergraduate students?
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As the owner of a tutoring company, I see some trends when it comes to the students we enroll in our programs. One of those is of the bored/frustrated adult learner. More and more often, I have students who get tired of reading textbooks and writing reports. Yes, there is great value to being able to mentally digest more complex material; however, it doesn’t mean that this is the only way to comprehend information. Furthermore, there is a lot to be said for a person who is not only able to read and comprehend a textbook full of polysyllabic words; but is also able to write a report on it.

If we could allow our education system to bring back more creative tools, lessons, experiments, and learning opportunities back into the classroom – then there would be a greater probability that our older students could become more engaged and excited about what they are learning.

Now that it’s summer, we have the chance to make learning fun again; to make it creative and different. In the upcoming weeks, I will be listing some unique ways to make lessons out of life; these ideas can be used by parents, teachers, big brothers and sisters, etc. Plus, making learning fun doesn’t mean that if you’re 19 or 39 that you can’t enjoy learning. And the upcoming posts will be reflective of that.

Research has also been conducted to reinforce the need for play and varied methods of learning.

Here is the link to an article written by Scientific American, on the topic.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-serious-need-for-play

There are college students who have already graduated this Spring. And there are others who are getting ready to. No matter the position, the job market doesn’t appear to be too welcoming to the Class of 2009.

Business
Friday, May 29, 2009

Post-college careers: Rotten luck for the Class of 2009

Things couldn’t be worse for the 2009 graduating class, said Steve Giegerich in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the “numbers are bleak.” Businesses are hiring 22 percent fewer new graduates than last year—and 2008 wasn’t exactly a knockout year. “Not only is the economy not growing, it’s retracting,” said NACE spokesman Edwin Koch. “It’s an abysmal employment market.” Many grads are now settling for unpaid internships in the hope that they’ll be hired full time when the economy does turn around. That doesn’t mean recent graduates shouldn’t expect to ever find the job they want, “only that it will take longer.”

Unfortunately, the bad news for grads doesn’t end when they get a job, said Sara Murray in The Wall Street Journal. Entering the workforce during a recession can have lasting effects on how much you earn over the course of a career, according to one study by Yale School of Management economist Lisa Kahn. “Even those who land jobs will likely suffer lower wages for a decade or more compared with those lucky enough to graduate in better times.” Studying data from the deep recession of the early 1980s, Kahn found that a single percentage-point increase from year to year in the unemployment rate correlated to an 8 percent reduction in earnings for new graduates. Twelve years out of school, graduates from recession years were still earning an average of about 5 percent less than peers who entered the workforce just before or after they did. Even 18 years out of school they averaged 2 percent less. One way to shake this “curse” is to just stay in school a few years longer—not surprisingly, this year’s top graduate schools “are already tracking double-digit increases” in applications.

Not only expected salaries but entire career paths may be “drastically” affected by this retrenchment, said Steve Lohr in The New York Times. While the promise of a six-­figure paycheck on Wall Street once “proved irresistible to many of America’s brightest young people,” today’s go-getters are setting their sights on jobs in public service, science, health, and technology. “Graduate schools of government and public policy are seeing a surge of applications.”­ These aspiring civil servants aren’t just eager to do their part for society by working for the government; they also think that’s where the jobs are. “The timing is right to do this,” says Patricia Foglesong, who recently turned down a consulting job. She’s ­considering two government jobs: one with the Secret Service and one with the National Park Service.

http://www.theweek.com/article/index/96881/Postcollege_careers_Rotten_luck_for_the_Class_of_2009

There is a bit of irony involved with this article – as the majority of public schools across the country are in the midst of their yearly dose of state testing. Furthermore, college students have just finished up their finals for the year; at the same time, high schoolers get ready to take their exams for the end of this school year.

Nonetheless, it is a valid point – do our schools test too much? Personally, yes I do believe that our students are tested far beyond what they need to be. And this is a topic that I will be bringing up again at a later point. So until that happens, here’s another article from The New York Times.

Do Schools Test Too Much?

Daniel Koretz is a professor of education at Harvard. His book Measuring Up examines our national obsession with standardized tests.

Does U.S. education policy rely too heavily on test scores?

Yes. We need accountability in education, and standardized tests give comparable information from different schools. But tests don’t measure things like complex problem-solving ability, creativity, and persistence. High-stakes testing puts pressure on teachers to take shortcuts to raise scores and can give an illusion of progress.

Doesn’t an improved score show real progress?

Not necessarily. There are many ways to prepare students too narrowly for a specific test. If you substitute another test designed to measure similar knowledge and skills, the “improvements” sometimes shrink markedly or even vanish altogether. Employers and college professors don’t care how students do on a particular math test—they want them to know math.

Should teacher compensation be linked to test scores?

If pay is linked to performance, tests will have to be part of the package, but it would be a mistake to use them as the only criterion. A good teacher keeps students engaged, fosters curiosity, and helps students learn from their mistakes. Test scores alone can’t measure that.

— Lyric Wallwork Winik