On 6/2/02 10:39 PM, "Diane Wiley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip> >It seems to me that there is a real focus, at Seward > anyway, on making the math and the science relate to the kids' lives -- > measure the rooms in your house, figure out what it costs to run a store, > analyze what you eat and how it affects your body. Diane's comments here reminded me of something I recently saw in the U of MN E-newsletter. It talks about a six-week science and math summer program at the White Earth Reservation where the students explored how science and math tie into everyday life. http://www1.umn.edu/systemwide/enews/#Anchor-Expanding-23240 After reading umpteen posts over the past several months regarding the Minneapolis Public Schools, it seems to me that this may be one of our greatest challenges, is how do we make this stuff relevant to the students? If we could do that, won't we likely solve some of the other challenges MPS faces like disruptive kids, truancy, low test scores, and so forth. Get the kids interested and they'll pay attention, want to come to school and will more than likely better retain what they learn and so test scores should rise. That seemed to work for me and I attended MPS for all of my K-12 education. I graduated in 1990 with a 3.9 GPA, a 30 ACT score and a 1320 SAT score, good enough to get me into most colleges. I went on to the U of MN and earned a BS in chemistry with a minor in philosophy and now do environmental policy research for the state of MN. Judging from my 10-year reunion a couple years ago, many of my classmates are doing well after graduating from the MPS system, too. Am I totally off-base or oversimplifying the problem? I realize there are lots of other challenges with students who move around too much or have other problems at home, but it's been pointed out often that there's usually little, if anything, that MPS can do about stuff like that. Are there other examples of this besides Seward where this goes on? How does student achievement at Seward compare to other schools? I learned how to apply math and science to everyday life back in the Summatech Magnet at North High (go Polars!), but that was more than ten years ago and I haven't kept up as well as I'd have liked, so I don't know what they do now. But it would seem to me that this would be a big reason for supporting magnet programs, since students generally are the ones choosing to be a part of them (at least at the high school level), which would suggest they have at least some interest in whatever the focus of that magnet. We should be supporting and encouraging these interests, shouldn't we? Mark Snyder Ward 1/Windom Park [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
