When To Say "First Things First"?
I all to often have felt frustrated by the feeling that many of my students are fooling themselves to think that they might succeed in their chosen career despite severe language deficits. Have you ever found yourself compelled to suggest postpone their studies, focusing first on correction of their prohibitively weak language skills?
ROBERT,
this is a great point. The institution where I teach (4 year school) has a check point mid-way through most programs (portfolios, interviews, exams, etc) to help students & faculty determine if this is the best career option for this person.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
I think all instructors feel this way about some students from time to time. And I think as an instructor this is one of my greatest fears (that I am contributing to the failure of a person by trying to train him or her in a field that they will not be successful in). I think the best thing I can do is to be honest about my experiences and to make the training as real world as possible.
Be positive in the classroom letting all students know that they can succeed anywhere that they are willing to put in the hard work and to always show the students that there are many levels of a chosen profession and one may be for them.
oriole,
unfortunately this is a significant challenge. On the larger scale there may be opportunity to discuss these issues with admissions. On the smaller scale of the classroom, I would say it's a matter of helping these students as much as you can & hopefully they will be engaged with their own success.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
I feel pressured to spend extra hours helping students who were not ready for collage but were admitted anyway. We serve the student, but at the expense of the other students. I would say 50% of my students do not read or write at the 7th grade level and they are not English as a second language learners.
I don’t know what the answer is here. If they didn’t learn this stuff in high school, where would they go for help?
My foreign students seem more motivated to learn the material, and seem to be better educated in the own language. I am not in a region where we have lots of immigrants so this isn’t much of a factor for me.
