Stump speech to parents To charter schools To businesses and business groups (with an appeal to businesses to donate computers and their statff time and mentors and internships)
Two years ago, Bill Gates gave a historic speech. It changed the landscape of education by 2/3s. I'm talking with you today about the missing third.
The first point Bill made was we need more rigor ?the courses need to be tougher. We are falling behind our competition and it is a global market. The second was more relevance, the course material needs to connect to the lives of students.
The third pint that Bill mentioned was relationships. This is where we have the most to gain with your help. Most kids spend most of their day time with teachers. They see their parents in the evening and perhaps an athletic coach (who usually does a lot of shouting and ordering around) in the afternoon.
Where are the mentors? The adult role models? Usually schools bring in a fireman or a policeman in elementary school and that's it.
An innovative school in Rhode Island sends the students on internships where they find mentors. Every 9 weeks, the students report to the school in stand up exhibitions with power point presentations about what they learned. The presentations are part of everyone's education. This means than in a school of 120 students, there are 120 mentors, at least, talking with students each week.
That's the sort of relationship that adults, parents and businesses can have at schools. In particular, at my school,, Downtown Academy, the principal encourages adults to come to the school and get involved, sitting in small groups with students ad finding out WHAT IS YOUR PASSION? What are your interests? How can we tie what you love to what you need to learn?
I'm here today to reemphasize RELATIONSHIPS and connections to adults. If we care about education, we can act on that sentinment by becoming mentors. I'm passing out forms and I will collect them. You can choose in this moment to become a mentor or at least check the little ebox that reads, ?Tell me more? I;?m not yet ready to commit.? That's an action too. The only failure here is not giving me back that piece of paper.
examples of what you can do abound. For example, I have a friend who has a travel web site: Roadlovers.com. She allows students to write about their favorite place on the planet and then post the article on the site. It adds content and the student gets feedback and credit for real work.
I have a web site about teaching free english lessons. It's called FreeEnglishlessons.com and I use high school students as tutors for the online content with local visitors from other countries. I am sure you can create your own examples.
Thank you for your time and I end today by asking you for computers for our charter school, downtownacademy.org. You can call (954) 646 8246 or write to me at my email address below. We need old computers that we can tear apart and learn from and we need to cannibalize parts and we need donations of new and nearly new computers. Cash is good too. Thank you.
Steve McCrea www.FreeEnglishLessons.com steveenglishteacher@hotmail.com