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Volume 3, No. 1
Winter/Spring, 2009 Exclusively online at
www.EducationHall.com
"Where is college?" I was sitting in my extremely comfortable yet not-so-fancy blue chair in my isolated office staring at a 13-year-old Hispanic boy named Oliver for the umpteenth time this month. Oliver had systematically worked his way out of his ESL class…again. Over the past twenty months, Oliver and I have had many conversations about our expectations at school and in life, we have met with his parents, he has occupied our in-house suspension room, and we have tried incentive-laden deals in an attempt to create positive habits. At that moment, I was staring simply because I couldn’t think of anything else to do or say. I was speechless. After the longest 30 seconds of his life, I relied on my go-to line and asked, “What do you see yourself doing in 10 years? Working? Living with your parents? Do you have a nice house? A nice car? A hot tub? A hot wife? College?” After giggling at the thought of his future wife he asked in a heavy accent, “Where is college?” Again, I was speechless. I just mentioned a house, a hot tub and referenced an attractive woman to an 8th grade boy and he wants to know where college is located. Well, there’s a College City in New York, Pittsburgh and L.A. and a College Park in Georgia. But, honestly I didn’t have a real answer to his question so I said, “College is everywhere.” 45 minutes later we had Googled some local colleges, visited WebPages of colleges in Hawai’i and some in Mexico. We talked about the degrees that were displayed on my wall, went over financial options and the fact that you get to select your own classes. “I get to take what I want?” Oliver asked more than once. We had just scratched the surface. This is my question: How in the world did a 13-year-old boy who has been in the United States since 2nd grade, has attended 4 different schools, and is now ¾ of the way through his 8th grade year get to this point in his educational career without being exposed to a discussion, a book or a video about college? These types of questions have been haunting me since I moved from the elementary school level to the middle school abyss a couple of years ago. Thinking back on my days as a classroom teacher, I can hear the echoes of myself saying, “They won’t put up with this in middle school” or “Wait ‘til you get to middle school…you’ll learn in a hurry.” Boy was that a mistake. It is malpractice, and I was guilty of it, to rely on the next teacher to educate a student about general responsibility, gangs, drugs, sex, weapons or…college. The time is now and the person is you. Here’s the bottom line: It is our responsibility as educational experts, whether you’re a principal, assistant principal, counselor, or classroom teacher, to prepare students for tomorrow. Right now, the job Oliver will have some day may not even exist. Our rapidly changing world needs people who are prepared for everything life throws at them, not just robots that can diagram a sentence. It is our responsibility to have those conversations about college, pose situations involving drugs, and equip them with the tools to handle themselves in adverse situations. I have seen more than one adolescent be exposed to a bag of weed or get confronted by a group of boys wearing rival gang colors during the first week of school. If we depend on the next teacher in line to have these types of conversations…it may be too late. Oliver may not remember that we decided on three periods of work crew as a consequence for his actions in ESL class that day, but he will remember the information we printed out on the University of Hawai’i and The Community College of Southern Nevada. Please, confront the issues, teach the whole child and make sure you keep the big picture in mind when those circumstances arise. Many times, you will have the opportunity to ignore your well crafted Pythagorean Theorem lesson for the day and teach a lesson about life. Seize 'em. It’s just common sense.
Bring Derek
Cordell to your school or district: Click
http://www.EducationHall.com/contact.htm for more information. |
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© 2009 EducationHall. All rights reserved. |
