In this blog, http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2010/10/conversation-with-my-students.html, a high school Algebra teacher has a conversation with his students about his success in teaching his students the past year. He tells them in order to be a successful citizen, they have to be numerate and tells them they need a lot of the skills they are learning in Algebra, but not so much what they take in Trig. or Pre-Calc. Second he says that if they decide they are eventually going to do something with math or science, they are going to need the skills they are currently learning to progress to more complex topics. The third reason is to get a good grade in the class, ha. He feels this is the least important reason, but he says the students may find this to be the most important.
Just because students pass a class in school, doesn’t necessarily mean they actually “learned” anything. In this article on helping middle and high school students learn, http://www.academicresources.org/learning.html, it says that some students only memorize the information they need to know in order to pass the class. Lots of times, students don’t know where to go to get the resources they need to learn. Families play an important role in their child’s education. But they are only one of many sources that adolescents can turn to. Other sources, http://www.academicresources.org/learning.html#sources, are teachers, peers, books, etc. These resources are important as they not only are there for students to use in their education, but also knowing they have them, can encourage them to want to learn and be successful.
