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For all the hype about college, get this: The top 10 richest Americans with college degrees are worth $506 billion (top three: Gates, Zuckerberg, Ellison); but, the 10 wealthiest Americans without college degrees is not far behind at $400 billion (top three: Bezos, Buffett, the Koch brothers). Source: https://college-education.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=006844.
It should come as no surprise that, when the year ends, students and teachers are ready to part ways. The phrase, “If we never meet again, it’ll be too soon!” resonates with both parties. However, the saying doesn’t have to suggest a topsy-turvy year of mutual dissatisfaction. Rather, it can speak of something positive—the difficult yet rewarding path to personal growth.
At The Beekman School, English teachers are given the freedom to personalize the curriculum by reading literature that’s not on most high school syllabi. While we don’t neglect the classics, we do spend the first week sizing up a class to determine what texts students might find especially engaging.
The following is an excerpt from English teacher James Vescovi's book "Eat Now; Talk Later":
My father was the first person in the family to go to college; I was the first to go to graduate school. While my grandparents were proud of my father’s achievement, they were totally baffled by mine. Tony and Desolina Vescovi, Italians who’d immigrated to New York in 1930, had had to quit school after fourth grade to work on their farms. They’d always thought that college was as high as a human could go.
If you’ve ever been on the London tube, you’ve seen the signs that say, MIND THE GAP. Given that it’s college application season, my message to parents is, “Mind the gap year.”
I know what you’re thinking: “If my child took a year off before college, she’d never go back to school. She’ll become a GAP salesclerk for life.” My response is, “Not if you handle the process correctly.”
For Professor Carol E. Holstead, the “moment of truth” about note taking came when she found her students continually using social media during lectures.
“I could not compete with Facebook and YouTube, and I was tired of trying,” she writes in “The Benefit of No-Tech Note Taking,” which appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
News flash: The educational “skills gap”—on which the media report regularly and who tell us is the fault of “failing schools” and “lazy, tenured teachers”—is not what you’ve been led to believe.
When you sit with a friend at lunch, do you keep your cell phone on the table? If you do, the mere presence of your phone can change the quality of the encounter.
“People keep the conversation on topics where they won’t mind being interrupted,” writes Sherry Turkle, in her recent article “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.” “They don’t feel as invested in each other. Even a silent phone disconnects us.”
In a recent column that appeared in The Federalist, managing editor Joy Pullmann noted parenting factors that she believes contribute to raising children who are stable, independent, and aware of the world in which they live.
Too often high school teachers serve up the same “classic” novels that have weighed down the literary canon for decades. You know the culprits: The Great Gatsby, A Tale of Two Cities, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Grapes of Wrath, to name a few.
