"Why Do I Have to Learn This?"

            One quote that stuck out to me from the Gallagher reading was “Writing well is not just an option for young people- it is a necessity.” I couldn’t agree more with this statement. Students will encounter the need to write and verbally express themselves constantly in the workforce. So it is imperative for educators to prepare students with the writing skills they need to not only exist in the real world but to thrive in it as well.

            Gallagher points out that many students leave school without proper writing skills due to the overemphasis and sheer amount of content. I can remember having similar experiences in high school. One class that stands out particularly was my AP psychology class. My teacher had taught at my high school for many years and already achieved tenure. So, essentially he knew as long as he showed up for school and “appeared” to be teaching something he wouldn’t be reprimanded. Throughout the school year he’d hand out work sheets to my class that correlated with the textbook. The entire class copied answers directly from the textbook in most cases. More and more content kept getting “taught” with no real attention to the details. We’d cram definitions and vocabulary the night before exams and forget it almost simultaneously when we turned in our scantron sheets. Ironically enough we only had multiple choice question assessments even though there is an essay component to the AP exam. Needless to say I did not perform very well on the AP psych exam and it was not entirely my fault. I wish my teacher had given me more opportunities to write and express my knowledge of the content. Not only would I have done better on the AP exam, but I’m sure it would have bettered overall abilities as a student. So I agree with Gallagher’s notion that the overarching obsession with content quantity is shadowing the more important skills that students need to obtain.

            The idea of providing students with real world models and connections should be a priority for educators. We need to get them interested in writing. As a future science teacher I can especially see the importance and value in this concept. Sometimes content can become too abstract and the student feels no relation to the subject. They’ll sit in class thinking “I’m never going to use this stuff so why do I have to learn it?” 

Teachers need to know that students are going to wonder this question and have lessons prepared to answer it. In a previous class I’ve taken we had to make lesson plans, present them to our peers and then have them guess our objectives. I think this activity can be useful with students as well. Perhaps at the end of each lesson or unit give students the opportunity to guess the teacher’s objectives. This puts them in their teacher’s shoes and gives them a different perspective on the content. This can be a great gauge for educators as well because them they can see what points students think are important and taking away from lessons. So instead of having writing and other assignments be a chore, students will have a better grasp of why exactly the teacher is having them do it and why the information is valuable to them. Teaching students to be invested and motivated in what they are learning is key.