Passion In Students

It is my opinion that if you can find a students passion at an early age, you will produce an excellent student. Programs that help students participate in diversified careers need to start at a younger age. In most schools these programs start to heat up at about the high school age. For some students with great ability it is too late. Some students have already started down the road of bad study habits and not learned the appropriate skills with which they will need to persue their passion. Although, its never too late to pursue your passion, it can become rather difficult the later you start. I would like to see the movement for students to participate and test careers to move toward the junior high ages. Programs within the community that will allow students of this age to become familiar with all sorts of careers such as medicine, engineering, and law. Its not unnatural for students in general to not be overwhelmingly obsessed with school. However, if they can find their passion at ages 12-14 then that may spark something inside of them that helps to realize why their education is important to them. Some schools may already have programs like this established but I'm quite sure that not every school does. At least not the school I attended. It's important that the educational system realize that students that are passionate are better learners. I believe that it will be one of our main responsibilities as future teachers to help students find their passion.

Standardized Testing

Standardized testing has become a large part of the public educational system. These tests carry a tremendous amount of weight when judging the academic performance of students. Additionally, we find that testing is also a determinant in funding for public schools along with a basis for which teachers performance is judged. I do understand that some type of system must be in place in order to make sure that students are achieving at an appropriate rate. However, these tests do not always tell the entire story. Many times students who have excellent grades including "A" students have a hard time passing these tests. Many very good students are just not good test takers. It is my opinion that in evaluating students, one must also take into consideration their entire body of work. Even tests such as the ACT and SAT cannot measure how hard a person will work for their particular goal. In the day and age of standardized testing my belief is that something is being left out. Hard work. In addition, schools have started "teaching to the test". What this means is that these students are only being taught what will be on particular tests for a certain period of time. What this amounts to are glorified study tables that are not an indication of what students actually know. But, what students have crammed, or memorized for these tests. Since when are grades not good enough to determine the validity of an education? What has effectively been done is taking the education of our youth out of the hands of the educators and into the hands of politicians.