You are singing my song! Many of our younger students lack the requisite skills necessary to master the skill they have chosen to pursue. Because we do not have any type of qualification exam for our school - only a high school diploma - it's very frustrating to backtrack and teach things students should have already mastered.
It's true that even the most minor roadblocks allow them an excuse to miss class, which puts them even further behind. When they find out that our course requires more effort than expected, they want to leave school and move on to something else. Many of them appear to be looking for the easy way.
Do other career colleges allow qualification exams, or is that too restricting?
When i have a student that comes with an absence of a basic skill, i usually take the time out to help them with such things.
I had a student that needed help with a resume and i helped her by giving her sample resumes and required things that are vital for a resume.
I can certainly feel you pain on this one. I teach automotive courses in which most require basic math skills, some require a little more than others depending on the course. I have some classes where half of the students can’t add or subtract basic decimals or fractions or can even cross the two together for some of the geometry needed for basic frame measuring and when I start talking about degrees and minute it throw them even further off track. I usually spend one third of the time out in lab showing small groups how to read a protractor or even a tape measure before I can demonstrate a lab technique or alignment of a vehicle. I have been told by some people that it is in part to a lot of the Industrial arts classes being taken out of our high schools. Does anyone have any ideas on this issue?
I certainly feel your frustration. It's incredibly difficult to be at a point where you can't teach your curriculum because you're have having to back up and regroup, teaching basic skills before you can move on. At first, I really let it get to me, but now I've had to come to terms with looking at their work for the content only. As long as they are grasping the concepts I have laid out for them, I will let them resolve their other issues when they get to the basic math and english classes.
This is a big problem in our institution. We have many students who do not seem to have evr experienced having to really apply themselves. By this I mean we have students who have been told that something would be difficult, but then found that they were able to get by without very much effort.
Our program actually is very challenging and some of these students are angered by the fact that the material requires effort on their part. I believe that they actually do not have the basic understanding of what it means to "work hard." Similarly they lack resiliency. A cold, a minor car accident, an argument with a spouse or boyfriend, or even rain are, in their minds, legitimate reasons for missing days of classes.
Of course other students are lacking in basic academic skills such as being able to identify the parts of a sentence. On the one hand they find covering such simple material to be boring, but on the other hand they need to master it.
Hi Christine,
The Venn Diagram is made up of two or more overlapping circles. It is often used in mathematics to show relationships between sets. In technical instruction, Venn Diagrams are useful for examining similarities and differences in applications, techniques, and skills.
They can used as a pre-writing activity to enable students to organize thoughts or textual questions prior to writing an explanation or essay on a procedure. This activity enables students to organize similarities and differences visually.
Gary
Hi Desiree,
There are several issues that revolve around helping students be successful when they are missing some of the basic skills needed for the course. The first is to have better pretesting to help with placement. Many colleges pretest students and then place them according to their knowledge/ability levels.
Another part is to provide instructional supports that help the students acquire the information. These instructional supports can be additional handouts, study guides, Venn diagrams, graphic organizers, and structured outlines. All of these help the students to focus on exactly what they need to work on to develop their skills so they can continue to progress in the course.
Gary
