band-aid-ing education

It's been almost ten years since I graduated high school. (yikes! Reunion next year. Should I go? Should I stay?) The high school experience of today is similar to the one I had a decade ago, but much has changed. Like technology. My first phone was a little Nokia that fit in the palm of my hand. It was used to call my parents to pick me up from sports practices and from friends' houses, and I'd play snake on it every once in a while if I was super bored. By the time I was a senior, color screens were out, and only the rich kids had those. The super rich kids (early adopters) had about 50 text messages a month. I didn't get texting until my freshman year in college. It was like 100 texts a month and you'd count so very carefully. Parents would get a physical copy of all your texts in their bill. Some parents would receive large boxes of text transcripts every month. Teens now send more like 200 texts a day! When I tell these stories to my students, they stare at me, wide-eyed with unbelief that their ultra cool-hip English teacher had to live through those dark days of technology.

I purchased my first flash drive at the BYU-I bookstore for $50. It was only 4 gigs. Now people hand out 4 gig thumb drives as party favors with their company logo on them. My iPhone 6+ can wirelessly stream music to my speakers. Sitting in a waiting room yesterday I created a new document for a writing exercise on my phone. It's now sitting in my Google Drive and I can access it whenever and wherever I want. I've collaborated on the same document at the same time with others while on separate computers. Writing letters is a thing of the past, and parents are getting email addresses for their children as soon as they are conceived. What I'm trying to say is that technology is a very large part of how we communicate in our 21st century world. 

Why are we still making our student use paper and pencil to turn in work? The last time I turned in a work report (for the school district, mind you) using only paper and pencil was....never (in the three years I've been working). Kids are expected to graduate and be prepared to contribute to society by applying for jobs, getting those jobs, and then being paid for their work. In order to have marketable skills, it is expected that one can write a well-worded email. When was the last time a student learned how to write a persuasive email? (Don't forget the fact that almost all job applications are online now.) I have yet to write a literary analysis on the character of the Superintendent and then mail it with a stamp to him, but maybe I should do that one day. 

Yes, critical thinking is essential in today's workforce, (according to Forbes in 2013, it was the most desired trait in workers), and we need to prepare our kids, and even the ones balancing on the poverty line, to enter the modern world of working. People are shouting from all directions about how our educational standards need to be reformed, and I agree. We have thrown way too much money at different programs that are supposed to "fix" what's broken, when in fact, it's just a band-aid patch job on a larger disease.

Let's work on finding a cure for all the "patch jobs" that we have done over the years. Let's give these students skills that will make them valuable in the workforce while having them learn how to learn. That is the greatest gift we can give students today.