Does What I Want Matter?

I came in early to prepare my lesson for the day. The objective for the day was to be able to distinguish between problem/solution, cause and effect, compare and contrast, sequence, and descriptive text structures.  I was excited to show my students that we use these text structures in our everyday conversation. However, my students informed me that education was not important and that they did not feel the need to do things that would not benefit them in the future. Immediately I needed to get to the root of these comments. The objective was now changed, and my students were now the teachers. This was definitely an opportunity to understand their world and logic.
I asked the questions and the provided the answers. At the conclusion of class, I found out the following:

*Students feels like reading, math, science and history are the only subjects needed
* The FCAT is unnecessary
* They would prefer to have life skills and vocational courses offered in school
* Teachers do not really teach, they just want them to be robots

After listening to them, I realized that I do agree with them. As teachers we should be concerned about not only teaching the subject matter, but helping them prepare for the real world. We need to consider how we keep our students interested in school. I agreed that providing more vocational track programs would be beneficial for my students, especially African American at risk males. All students will not go to a four-year university. Some kids will need a vocational certificate. If we could offer some of those courses while in high school, I believe that the students will be more successful and the dropout rate and low graduation rate will decrease. They wanted programs like construction, welding, air conditioning and heat, and plumbing. It is my duty to share the information and concerns of my students with the school district.