National Pet Day today. I celebrated by taking Larry to the groomer - he showed his appreciation by shaking all the way there and then refusing to look at me on the ride home.
It's National Welding Month - I celebrated by getting a flash burn on my eyes at work the other night. One of the occupational hazards of working with a bunch of rookies.
And speaking of rookies, many of the students I encounter at the college are stone cold rookies when it comes to being able to do math and/or read at anything close to grade level. I'm placing much of the blame for this on the schools. I taught 36 years at the high school level, 8 years at the community college level and I haven't seen any improvement in the student's abilities to read or do math problems typical of what is required for the trades since I started way back in 1976, but still they graduate from high school.
In Indiana, in order to graduate with the Core 40 diploma, you must take Algebra I & II and Geometry. Integrative Math I, II, and III can be substituted. I'm not familiar with Integrative Math, so I can't speak to that, but requiring two years of Algebra is pointless for the majority of people entering into the trades. It's bad enough they can't do simple math problems associated with a trade, but they don't seem to think it's an issue. And unfortunately, their reading skills aren't any better. However, there is hope for a solution, and it comes from Mississippi of all places. The Magnolia State has shown tremendous growth in their reading and math scores. Let's hope other states do something similar.
2 comments:
Coincidentally, The Boy® got arc flash on Tuesday as well.
everybody's waiting on our robots to do everything for us then we can make them do it all.
youtube.com/watch?v=6L0xT8lMyss
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