Back to School!

Today was my Leadership class again, and our theme this month was "Back to School."  After a quick stop at the Chamber of Commerce office, we started our day at the local middle school.  Each of us was assigned to two classrooms to observe.  I was assigned to observe two fifth grade math classes.


It was interesting to see some of the ways that going to school has changed since I went all those years ago, but there were two things that I observed that disturbed me somewhat.  In the first class the students spent most of their time working on practice questions for the Ohio standardized tests that are required of the students.  Funding for the schools is tied to how well the students do on these tests, so having them do well on them is a high priority.  I agree that it is good to want students to do well, but I think it is wrong that so much emphasis is placed on these tests.  It just seems like a backwards way to teach to me.


The other thing that I didn't care for was how much the teachers pushed using calculators on the students.  They said that the calculator was a tool to help them be more efficient and work faster.  They were working on percentages, decimals, and fractions.  These weren't overly difficult problems, but the students were still encouraged to use their calculators to find the answers instead of doing the division problems themselves.  Personally, I think it would be better to put a higher priority on using their  brains to figure those things out instead of punching the numbers into a calculator.  Maybe I'm too old-fashioned or just plain old, but I think it would be better to teach kids how to think for themselves than to teach them to rely on a machine to solve their problems.


Anyway, pardon me for going off on that little tangent.  I'll jump down from my soapbox now.  After our classroom visits, the superintendent of schools spoke to us about the school board, what they do, and what their job is.  Her speech was followed by a presentation from a mom who home schools her children.


We went to lunch after that and then went to our local community college for a tour there.  We had an extensive tour, but the part that I found most interesting was the new nurses' lab that they have.  They use animated mannequins in the nurse's training lab  that are really amazing.  These mannequins actually blink their eyes and move as if breathing, have pulses and heart beats and belly and lung noises.  They can be programmed to turn blue around their mouths if they aren't getting enough oxygen, and all sorts of other illnesses or injuries can be simulated with the mannequins.  This gives the nurses very life-like experience in their training where they can learn what to do and how to react in various situations and not worry about harming any patients if they make a mistake.


One of the mannequins they had was a pregnant woman who delivers a baby.  The baby is also an animated mannequin.  We were told that the pregnant "mom" mannequin even screams and moans during delivery and says things that a pregnant mom might say in the same situation.   They can simulate various kinds of births with the mannequin, too, including a normal birth, a breech birth, a Cesarean birth, one complicated by hemorrhaging, and so on.  It was quite amazing and very fascinating.  This modern technology comes with a hefty price, though.  We were told that they had paid $50,000 for each of the adult animated mannequins that we were shown as part of our tour.


If you are interested, you can see what these mannequins are like and how realistic they are (albeit in a rather creepy sort of way--hahaha!) in this video.  This video is not from the community college we visited today, but this illustrates very well what the mannequins are like that we saw.

Our last stop was at the four county vocational school where we also took a tour.  They offer 30 different areas of study at this school.  We toured the classrooms and labs for many of those areas some of which included cosmetology, auto repair, diesel engine repair, landscaping and flower arranging and design, computer graphics and design, carpentry, electrical trades, engineering, construction, interior design, welding and many others.  

One thing that is very interesting about this school is that every year the students build a house in our community.  The house owner pays for the materials and for the transportation expenses of the students, but the student labor is free to the homeowner.  The students use this experience as a major part of their education.  The students build the entire house including plumbing, wiring, cabinets, wallpapering and painting,  and even do the sewing of curtains, and so forth.

As usual, I learned a great deal from my class today.  I'm exhausted tonight because it was a full and busy day, but the experience was a worthwhile one.