Lost Opportunities

Last fall Trace Pickering wrote an article for Getting Smart online titled “Students Are Calling BS on High School and Opportunity Knocks”.

I thought it would be a good thing to take a look at what some of America’s high schoolers are now saying about their present day learning experiences.

Pickering writes,

“Many students in our area who attended our Iowa BIG program half days were willing to share their feelings about high school post-pandemic. And an interesting pattern emerged. The finding was summed up best by one unabashed student who told us:

‘For the last two years I have worked on my school work for 90-120 minutes a day, was successful, and now I’m being asked to give school seven hours a day of my time. Why? They’ve shown me that they’ve been wasting five hours of my time each day. I’ve got more important things to do with my time than give school 20 hours of wasted time each week. School talk of valuing students. How is wasting 20 hours a week of my time valuing me?’”

“The student went on to share that they were able to work nearly 40 hours a week during the pandemic at $15/hour. He essentially asked why the school was now asking him to forgo $20,000 this school year just to sit in a seat learning what he could have done by 9 AM each day.”

Pickering goes on to write,

“Let’s be clear. These students are not wrong. The pandemic showed students that much of what they were required to do and endure during pre-pandemic high school was a lot of busywork and tasks that held little relevance or interest to them, and apparently didn’t really matter since they were able to be successful without all that extra work. When schools lost their ability to command and control a student’s time, it forced a different economy for schools and educators. It required the curriculum to be pared down to only the essential standards and information. It now had a very real and powerful competitor for the student’s time – a job, a hobby, sports, music, sleep…And boring, tedious and/or irrelevant assignments and work can’t, and shouldn’t win out. It has exposed the gross inefficiencies of the traditional approach to high school education.”

“Schools talk a lot about personalizing learning, of meeting kids where they are, and yet we see most high schools continue forward with prescribed, discipline-specific course conducted in roughly 150-hour annual segments. This approach continues to isolate the disciplines from one another despite the fact that they are highly interrelated. De-contextualized content is boring and lacks that ‘hook’ that helps make learning sticky. This system continues to waste student and teacher time in a myriad of ways, including but not limited to:

Forcing students who are highly engaged and/or competent in the discipline/subject ot have to wait for the curriculum to catch up with them

Creating a large group of students who believe the discipline/subject isn’t for them and conclude that they hate that subject and should work to avoid it

Transforming intrinsic motivation to learn into an extrinsic game of point and credit chasing and the belief that you can and should eventually ‘be done’ with learning

Channeling every student through a course that makes the erroneous assumption that every student in every school is going to major in the subject, therefor making it like a watered-down 101 course that disengages the majority of students

Taking interesting material, or material few people need to know, and making it boring and irrelevant simply to fill the time and to avoid being accused of not being ‘rigorous.’ Don’t get me started on what ‘rigor’ really means but if you’re curious, look up its definition and ask, ‘Is that really what I want for my classroom and my kids?’”

And then Pickering issues a hopeful vision for high schools moving forward,

“This is a wonderful opportunity to put in place the things that really drive 21^st-century skills and give students the keys to their own learning and growth. To truly personalize learning for students, and unlock teacher professionalism and creativity in the process. That extra time could allow students to pursue areas of passion and interest, to dive deep into a subject that interests them, pursue job shadows and internships, and earn and learn on a job.”

But Pickering’s hopeful vision for high schools moving forward didn’t happen.

Instead, today’s high schoolers have returned to pretty much the same campus they inhabited pre-pandemic. Same curriculum, same testing schedule, same teacher to student ratio, same budget, same leadership – same boredom.

High schoolers still might be calling “BS”, but it doesn’t seem like anyone is listening.

Til tomorrow. SVB