Preparation For College/Life
I was at a meeting yesterday and a comment was made that we may not be doing enough to prepare students for college level courses- that we are not demanding enough of our students academically in high school. Many believe there needs to be more of an emphasis placed on higher order thinking skills, research papers and independent study in high school. How prepared do you feel for college? Some of you take college courses right now. Do you feel that you are on par with your college classmates? Do you feel that you are at a disadvantage in some ways? What is being done to prepare you for the "real world"? What more should be done at the high school level to prepare students for life beyond 12th grade?
posted by KHannon @ 7:59 AM
5 Comments:
Mrs. Hannon,
I do not feel ready to go of to college and that scares me alot. To begin I have to attend college next fall and I don't feel prepared enough to handle their work. I took a college course in which I had to write a 5-8 page paper on a nursing career and my format was not proper. I did good on it, but good is not enough, I have to be either excellent or perfect. I'm not only saying that because I'm a perfectionist, but because I am really scared of college. I have to be the best I can be in college for myself and because my family is expecting 110% from me.
We are in a college prep school and I'm not saying that teachers aren't doing there job, but I feel as if theachers should push us more no matter how much we may complain. When I applied to Leonardo da Vinci I did it thinking about how prepared I was going to be for college, but I'm not prepared. I truly hate my English IV class. I hate the work she gives us because it has no sense in a 12th grade classroom. I'm not trying to say anything bad about my teacher, but I hate how the rest of the seniors are working an college entrance essays and the one class she has is doing compare and contrasting on what you want to be. I also don't like that we do word poems, meaning we draw a word. How is that helping me? I loved your class Mrs. Hannon. We had essays all the time. We had different interesting readinds. We had practice with grammar and vocabulary, that made me feel prepared to go to college. Unfortunely for me I only had you one year.
I feel that I am at a great disadvantage me being hispanic. English is my second language and I feel as if I have a lot of problems in my writting and understanding reading. Now if I have problems like this in high school, should I really feel prepared to go off to college? Why is it that Buffalo students are treated as if we were dumb. Some us of may think yeah with a 65 I pass, but are you really doin your best. Why is it that other schools need a 75, do they really think we can't handle it?
What really upsets me is the fact that we have SAT's comming soon and even though I do work outside of school for it I'm still not ready to even think about taking it. I feel that eitheir AP classes or REAL SAT prep classes at da vinci would had made me feel more prepared for college. Don't get me wrong Mrs. Hannon I feel that you guys do a good job, I just feel that you could had pushed us even more no matter how much we complained.
I don't feel that I am fully prepared to enter college. As a highschool senior I find myself finding bits and pieces of important information about college from my peers. Altough it is helpful this shouldn't be so. I feel the bulk of the prepartion for college is left up to the student and their parents. Yes this is a responsiblity shared among the students and their parents, but it is the schools job to get students into and prepared for college. Some kids might not be fortunate to have supportive parents so they depend on and need the school system. My freshman year I took a college course and haven't been back since. When you think of college don't you think challenge? When I took this course it was nothing of the sort. I found my freshman classes more of a challenge than that college course. Compared to other schools with the aspect of college preparation in mind we are at a disadvantage. Maybe more guidance counselors would help, but either way help is needed. To prepare us for the real world not much is being done. If my making it in the "real world" was based on whats being done in school to prepare me, could I make it? To prepare students for life beyond 12th grade there should be beneificial classes set up for students. We shouldn't wait for a bad occurance to take place in someone's life after 12th grade before we realize it could of been prevented if they were properly prepared.
Wow- You guys wrote more in response to this posting than any other so far! I guess this is an issue of real importance to you. I think that the district is trying, I'm just not sure they are going about it the right way. I do think we need to be more demanding of our students. I know that there are things that we would like to have for our students, but money is a real concern. But, Buffalo teachers really know how to do the best we can with the very limited resources we are given. I can say from experience having worked at another Buffalo high school- you are more ahead of the game than you think. Discipline problems do not get in the way of learning here the way they do at other schools. Many times I would find that I would only have a good 10 minutes of teaching time after dealing with the chaos. That's not what happens here.I'm not saying that there is not room for improvement- there is always room for improvement. I think we should have a day where some of our students could shadow at another city high school. I think it would become clear that you are in a better position than most. I do think more needs to be done to get us more on par with other districts though. We are working on that.
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Honestly, I feel that I am ready for college, but it is not all due to high school classes. Besides paying attention and doin work in school, those same thngs need to be done at home.
The college courses that I have taken have all gone well. I feel up to par with the other college students, but that is because I try my hardest to put myself in a college mind set. There is more expected of you in college with little or no acceptions for excuses. It should be that way in high school too. I believe only a few Buffalo Public high schools prepare students for college, but students can only be helped if they want it.
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