Summary

In this episode, we talk about our wishes for Education, following your dreams, and capitalizing off of what you do well. Let’s really make education a place for all.

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Transcription

Welcome to Cee’s Simple Secrets Podcast. Today’s episode is titled, “What They Didn’t Teach You in High School”. I just wanted to come to you with a short podcast today. I’m doing some reformatting and I’m trying to change up a little bit. I hope you all like the changes that I’m making. But this topic is, I guess, the highlight for Teacher Appreciation Week. I want to shout out all the teachers out there. Thank you for all that you do. I know that it has not been easy to teach; especially, in this time that we’re going through right now where so many schools are virtual one minute, and face-to-face the next, and there’s so much change, but you all have remained the constant. And of course, I’m in the trenches with you. I just want you to know that you are appreciated. Thank you to those that have retired. Thank you to those that have been inspirational to many of us, as we were growing up.

I also want to thank those that have been mentors to me in my teaching career. Those that I have worked up under as a student teacher and also my colleagues, my peers that I have worked with over the years, I’ve actually been an educator for 11 plus years now. So, I just appreciate everyone that I’ve even worked with and come in contact with– those that have really been collaborators and peers of mine. I want to celebrate you as well.

In light of COVID and the fact that we’ve been making so many changes in the way that we educate students, I’ve really been thinking about education and how it kind of needs to change. I had a conversation with my mom the other day, and we just talked about when I was in school in the nineties, there was always so much talk of going to college, getting your degree, and getting a job. And that’s one of the main things that I think needs to change about education because what’s happening is that we’re almost holding students back in that way. And that’s because we’re only thinking about things a certain way. What I had said to my mom is think about the eighties and the nineties, right? And even the early two thousands, because I graduated in 2004 and the way that education was done, it was just a lot different.

 I love the fact that we had so many projects. It seemed like we had a lot of collaboration back then. And also, just the way that my teachers really exposed us to literature and vocabulary. We learned the Latin roots of words and all that type of stuff and I think that was really great about education is that we were taught a lot of things. I think the downside, so to speak is that we were kind of pushed into one area and it’s like this is the only way that you can be successful. I’ve thought about it and that’s the problem that we’re still having today–why we have so many students that are not doing well in school and are not engaged in school. 

It’s like we’re sending them conflicting messages, because they see what’s happening on TV of course. They see artists, basketball players, and football players. Those people that have gone through schools just like them, only to take a different career path. And then they see the career path that we’re kind of pushing them to. We tell them you can be a doctor. You can be a lawyer. You can be an engineer, which yes, I believe that children can be all of those things.

But I also believe that some of our students can be influencers. I also believe some of our students can have a YouTube channel. I also believe some of our students can be content creators, where all they do is make content for somebody else’s page, make videos for somebody else’s page, or posts that they can upload to promote their business. And I think we’re forgetting that we also have to prepare students for those types of careers. We have to prepare them with coding. What if we started incorporating cooking into the curriculum again, or wood shop, and all of those things that they used to have back in the seventies because they were trying to prepare people to be stay at home mothers or to be carpenters or work in the factory or what not. But those skills are still necessary today. There are still people that build furniture by hand. There are still people that sew  in the fashion industry. You need somebody that can sew to create the prototype for the clothing line that you want to release. So, all of those things are still important too. And I think we’re doing a disservice to our students when we’re not exposing them to all of those careers. As many career days as I have participated in t when I was a student and even as a teacher, most of the people that would come in were police officers, firefighters, lawyers, doctors, what we will call professionals. But they’re not the only professionals. Some people may disagree with me in saying this, but some students are going to work in the customer service industry. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve had students tell me “When I grow up, I want to work in Marshall’s,” and who am I to tell them that their dream is not big enough, if that’s what they want to do.

You see everybody has a specific purpose. Everybody has a lane and they may go into Marshall’s and they may be the best customer service associate that you’ve ever had at Marshall’s. They may organize the clothing the best. They may set up the best mannequins and do the best staging of the living rooms or dining rooms or whatever merchandise they want to show off. Who am I to tell them that that dream is not for them? Who am I to tell them that that dream is not big enough because it’s not a doctor? Who am I to tell them that a dream is not big enough because you don’t  have to go to college for that? So, I think that we need to re imagine or re-invent the way that we are exposing children to different careers and exposing them to different paths.

I think that students deserve to be exposed to multiple areas. And it astonishes me that in 2021, we’re still teaching them this.  I was watching a show on Netflix, which is called,  “Family Reunion” and one of the daughters is a teenager. She was complaining to her mom about having to take trigonometry and asking when she would use it. Instead of her mm using it as a teachable moment to share some careers where she would use trigonometry, she gave her the age old advice that you do well  in school so that you can get a job and then you can have your own place. Then the grandmother jumps in and says, “Well, at least somebody is going to do that.” As much as I love the show, I think we’re sending the wrong message, even through television because children are going to see that the purpose of going to school is so you can get a job and get your own place.

The purpose of going to school is for you to gain the skills that are going to enable you to live in the real world. So we need to start teaching more real world strategies in our schools. We need to start teaching students about the multitude of paths that they can have access to. And we need to start exposing them to those things. Especially once they get to high school, not just having colleges come in for career fairs or career day, but also have barber schools come in or having cosmetology schools come in, or why don’t we have some realtors come in or carpenters? Why don’t we have entrepreneurs come in? I’ve never seen a music producer come to our career day. Yet many of the music producers that are out here and that are really popular are under 30 years old. It’s very rare that I’ve seen an entrepreneur come into a career day. Why don’t we have entrepreneurs teach students about their career path? 

 I want to say a lot of this stuff was incorporated into our education in some shape or form.

 However, I kind of feel like there was a caveat there though. It was kind of like these things are fun things that you can do, but they’re not necessarily careers that we would recommend for the long term. And I also think that it wasn’t explicitly taught, but it was implicit where it’s like, there’s only one thing that you can do. So, if you do this one particular job, you’re going to end up doing this until you retire. Where in today’s time, it’s totally different. Someone may have three different things that they do. For example, I’m a teacher, but I’m also a writer. I’m also a coach. I’m also a podcast host. So there’s so many different things that we can be teaching students and exposing them to and letting them know, you don’t have to just choose one career path. You can do multiple things within this career. Or if you learn these skills, there’s multiple things that you can do with this same skillset.

I think at the end of the day, it was still like you want to choose to go to college, don’t choose these other career paths. And I think it may also have something to do with the schools that I attended because they were application schools. So, they automatically assume that if you’re attending this school, then more than likely, you’re going to want to matriculate to some higher education institution.

 I also think that children need to be exposed to many things so that they can find what works for them. Like gymnastics. Why isn’t that offered in school? We have so many students that we say are so busy and don’t sit in their seats. They’re not getting their energy out. There are some students that know how to flip. They will swing from those monkey bars with no fear of falling or anything. We can monopolize on that and teach them gymnastics. I’ve never seen gymnastics taught in school. 

There are only certain schools that offer dance as part of the curriculum. And it’s usually in high school by the time they offer it, but why not offer it to those elementary students too? I’ve never seen woodwork or carpentry either. Coding is always something that students can do if they finish their work early. But actually, teaching students these things, teaching them real life skills-like how to open up a bank account.

We used to have a program that would come into the schools called Junior Achievement. There would be one day out of the school year where they would teach us about producing and consuming goods and services and things like that. But that was one day out of the year. Students need more exposure to it than that. What are some other things? There are so many things that we can be teaching students how to do. Teaching them how to do a podcast to become an expert on something and be able to teach others about it. That’s part of making a YouTube video. Lately I’ve joined Tik Tok and I’m just in love with it because you can actually teach people something in 60 seconds. I was watching this artist the other day and she was teaching about negative space and showing how she used shapes, which is geometry, to create a drawing of someone. All I could think was wow! If students knew that they were learning about triangles and squares and diamonds and things like that, because it would help them to draw and potentially become an artist, how many more students would get excited about geometry because they saw the value in it?

 I think that’s another thing that we need is to show students the value of what they’re learning and teach them why they’re learning it.. You’re learning this because this is a skill that you’re going to need to apply in the future. And don’t just tell them that they’re going to apply it in the future, show them how they are going to apply it. Basically, I’m saying we need to get back to the why. We need to figure out the why of what we’re doing. And if the why is not in line with what you want the end result to be, then that means some change needs to take place.

 We’ve been doing these books studies at work because we’re trying to deal with the equity issue and making education culturally relevant and things like that. And one of the things that we’ve really been talking about is bringing the joy back into education, and I think that’s so important. Where is the joy?

 We have punishment if you don’t do this, you’re going to get an F. If you don’t behave the way we want you to behave, you’re going to get suspended. We have punishment. But what about the reward? What about the joy? And the joy is not just in getting the A or the B. The joy is in the process of learning something, it’s in the productive struggle that’s occurring when you’re figuring out something, when you’re, problem-solving, that’s a skill that you’re going to need in the real world, knowing how to problem solve.

In today’s time. It doesn’t matter whether you know that George Washington was the first president or not. Where are you really going to use that information? We think it’s important because that’s the way that we were taught or it’s just important because we live here and we need to know who the first president was, but that’s something that people can look up on Google. But you can’t learn how to problem solve from Google. That’s something that needs to be taught. Once you teach them how to problem solve, and to think critically, or once you teach them how to research and find information, then they’ll get all of what you want them to know because you’ve taught them the pathway to get there. 

Follow me on social media @cssimplesecrets on Twitter and Tik Tok and @ceessimplesecretspodcast on Instagram. Also check out my book, “Not in Vain” linked here and the companion journal for the book linked here.