College and
career readiness means what it says, right? Ready for college and ready for a career, now
this seems too simplistic. There are two
different readinesses being described here—college and career, so are they the
same, or do we need to define them separately?
Rather than make that distinction, I am going to assume that one of the
goals of education is to make opportunities available to everyone, and
therefore dive into college readiness.
For college
readiness, we all are here in college, so we’ve went through a similar process:
taking college entrance exams, filling-out applications (discussing our GPA, involvement
in extra-curricular activities, an essay of some sort, and provide a couple of
references), and a few interviews. Now
we’re getting somewhere, narrowing it down a bit. So, without getting any deeper, college
readiness seems to be defined by the ability to perform certain tasks: fill out
forms (and read those forms), write essays, take tests, be involved in some
activities outside of the classroom, get to know a couple of people to vouch
for you, and be able to make it through an interview. As for the task of defining the educational goals
for college readiness, we then must include preparation for these things—filling
out forms, writing essays, taking tests, working on social skills in school and
in extra-curricular activities, and having some practice with interviews. Ultimately it comes down to trying to do
everything possible to prepare students for their next phase in life. Aligning educational goals nationally, like
common core, seems to be a very good, common sense idea. Knowing that there are over 14,000 school
districts in the United States, each with their own standard for graduation
pulls me in two directions: 1) I can’t believe it, and it makes no sense; and
2) it makes perfect sense considering the history of the United States, its land
mass, and population. There needs to be
some common ground between national standards and local autonomy, and the
idealist inside me believes that it can be done, and should be done. The teacher inside of me believes the testing
needs some refinement.
When
thinking about other ways I want my students to be literate, I have a difficult
time putting a label on it as a kind of literacy. Let’s see if describing it leads to a
connection with literacy… I believe it is very important for students to
understand and be aware that there are different ways of viewing reality—we all
have and bring our own biases to bear on how we view the world. We are all human and living on the same
planet, yet the reality experienced by a person who grows up in a city in China
is different than the reality experienced by a person who grows up in a city in
Brazil. You can see where I’m going
here, each person experiences the world at least a bit differently than another
person, and some people’s experiences are so different that it may appear like
they are on another planet, or at least in a different world. To the best of my
ability, I hope to present different views of reality through literature and
other media to students. Ultimately, I
hope my students are able to be approach life with an open-mind and be able to
understand what Robert Byrne meant when saying: “Until you walk a mile in
another man’s moccasins you can’t imagine the smell.” There, that helps me to understand it
best. I believe the literacy I am
talking about falls under cultural literacy/awareness.
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