In other situations, there is insufficient interest (rather than time).

I know that, for my part, I just shut up in situations like that and wait for it to mercifully end. You’d probably think I was a moron to watch it all.

And really, vo-tech is not for kids who can’t do algebra and English lit. It’s for kids who can, but don’t want to. That’s a small group these days.

Since we’ve moved, we’ve lost contact with one family, so we don’t know what their son has done since his graduation, but the other grad has been working as a housekeeper for a major hotel chain for the last two decades. Even though she isn’t able to live alone, she knows how to take the bus to work and do a good job. As her parents said at the time, the pretense that she is able to do algebra, understand history, read literature or handle abstractions, does her no good. Thanks to the training she received, she is a productive citizen.

But if you’re going to have to teach them yourself anyway and don’t need the free daycare, why bother with the public schools in the first place?

Improvement in class discussion is just one of the reasons I think all teachers ought to have informal writing in their toolkits. My latest ebook Shape Learning, Reshape Teaching deals with uses of informal writing. Here’s a link to a flip book of the table of contents and other front matter: http://snack.to/5anzSn0

Because it’s the definition of a helicopter parent? High school students should not be helped by their parents. It’s too late in high school. If a high school student isn’t doing his homework, the problem started long ago. If a school expects the parents of a high school student to provide motivation, it’s not going to work.

At much younger ages, parents can help children by making time in the schedule for homework to be done, and making completed homework a family priority.

Parents can also help by judiciously teaching their children the standard algorithms, which Everyday Math doesn’t teach. They can insist their kids do arithmetic by hand. They can practice the times tables with the kids, because those need to be automatic.

There’s a great deal of sensible homework. Sending kindergarteners home with a problem which, no joke, would require a system of equations to solve? That’s ridiculous, which is why I remember it to this day.

I’ve been a preceptor for a BSN program in the past…meaning students shadow me and get involved as their skill level allows. I’ll honestly say that despite the fact that this BSN program has a positive reputation, I’m not sure it is worth the extra money as compared to the average associate’s degree nursing program.

Institutions do go through periods where they will only hire BSNs…a little easier to do right now, not as easy in the past.

There is quite a range in compensation for entry level nursing jobs. I’m not sure that nursing would be appealing as a job choice if we expect people to pay the price of a 4 year education in order to get a job at the lower end of the pay scale.