A good deal of the frustration we feel in the classroom comes from our students being unprepared to take our instructions and use it to complete our assignments and make the grades that our administrators want us to make. There’s a lot of “OUR” in that sentence and that is signification. Let’s take this opportunity to think about WHY the students aren’t living up to OUR expectations in the classroom. The answer is access to opportunities for enrichment. Read more after the jump
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way. Many of our students can’t pay for enrichment, and their parents may not value education enough to seek out those opportunities that they know they can’t afford. That’s a problem that the education system itself can’t fix. Now on to the fixable part.
When I was growing up, I didn’t have transportation from my school to my house. That was a huge problem in keeping me engaged in student activities. My parents had a work schedule that make my schedule very strict, but they were fantastic at sharing and sacrificing in order to make sure I was always included. Why didn’t I have transportation to these opportunities? Why don’t our kids? IT makes sense to me that we could operate a late bus that can take kids home from extracurricular and enrichment opportunities so they have the opportunities to do something constructive instead of just walking away from school, being alone at home, and falling victim to the allure of the streets.
Prior to even discussing transportation, there needs to be activities to create that demand. I’m not just talking about sports, I’m talking about speech, drama, chess club, and everything in between. The CITY, not just the schools, need to create learning and enrichment opportunities that exist DAILY to give our students educational alternatives to the things we complain that “kids these days” are doing. Something like creating partnerships between our libraries, which we should keep open later, and our schools could create a place for our students to learn outside of school.
Security? Absolutely a concern. Why not extend the day of our hall monitors? Why not have some of Dallas’ finest spend an extra few hours outside of their cars and in our tax payer funded educational facilities?
If the activities exist, the facilities are safe, and the transportation is functional, then I see no reason why our kids won’t’ start to improve academically and socially almost immediately. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings and idle mind turns to mush. Let’s equip our students with the tools to become truly great by taking 24 hour education seriously.
When I was growing up, I didn’t have transportation from my school to my house. That was a huge problem in keeping me engaged in student activities. My parents had a work schedule that make my schedule very strict, but they were fantastic at sharing and sacrificing in order to make sure I was always included. Why didn’t I have transportation to these opportunities? Why don’t our kids? IT makes sense to me that we could operate a late bus that can take kids home from extracurricular and enrichment opportunities so they have the opportunities to do something constructive instead of just walking away from school, being alone at home, and falling victim to the allure of the streets.
Prior to even discussing transportation, there needs to be activities to create that demand. I’m not just talking about sports, I’m talking about speech, drama, chess club, and everything in between. The CITY, not just the schools, need to create learning and enrichment opportunities that exist DAILY to give our students educational alternatives to the things we complain that “kids these days” are doing. Something like creating partnerships between our libraries, which we should keep open later, and our schools could create a place for our students to learn outside of school.
Security? Absolutely a concern. Why not extend the day of our hall monitors? Why not have some of Dallas’ finest spend an extra few hours outside of their cars and in our tax payer funded educational facilities?
If the activities exist, the facilities are safe, and the transportation is functional, then I see no reason why our kids won’t’ start to improve academically and socially almost immediately. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings and idle mind turns to mush. Let’s equip our students with the tools to become truly great by taking 24 hour education seriously.
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