Classroom vs. Workplace

In the assignment I had this week, I had to think about the disconnect between the classroom and the workplace.  It made me really start to think about our curriculum and the purpose for students to be in school.  What are we preparing students for?  How can we predict what students will need in 10, 20, or 30 years from now when they are in the workplace.  Does it all come back to the rules we learned in Kindergarten? 

The disconnect between the business world and my classroom grows larger everyday.  With technology changing daily there is no way I can prepare my students for each new shiny-fancy-thing. 

Businesses rely on different communication skills that students, these days, seem to be lacking.  There is a larger emphasis for people to communicate effectively and to work cohesively with a team.  Many of these traits are things we work on in school.

Our schools writing scores on the Standards Based Assessments continue to go down.  Our students are not communicating in writing as effectively as they should.  Why should they write drawn out passages when texting, and short phrases are the norm in social networking?  The ease of technology stifles the complete thoughts, and description necessary to communicate successfully.

Students are working as a team and building their community networks, yet they have difficulty when interacting face to face.  Social etiquette is not as emphasized with students or their families. 

As an educator, my role is to continue teaching the content necessary to be educated in the world today, but also to teach students how to make smart choices they are responsible for.  For students to learn how to be flexible, to adapt to change quickly, and how to find reliable and trusted resources it will take more changes within the classroom to bridge the gap with the workplace.

All I Really Need To Know
I Learned In Kindergarten 

by Robert Fulghum

- an excerpt from the book, All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten.  ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the
sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:  

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don't hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don't take things that aren't yours.

Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die.
So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

© Robert Fulghum, 1990.
Found in Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, Villard Books: New York, 1990, page 6-7.

Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com by Mark A. Hicks, illustrator.