Learning Connected to the Real World

As one walks around the halls of Foothills Community School, it is not uncommon to hear the phrase “I wonder” muttered from the mouths of our administration, teachers, visiting community members or our students. This phrase represents the culture of inquiry we have striven to achieve within our building. It also helps us ensure that our content connects to the world around us as well as making sure our students work without fear of trying new things, knowing they will be supported as they build upon their own inquiry and creativity.
Our projects are designed with student-interest in mind as they complete interest surveys yearly and engage in the discussion of real-world problems. These quarterly projects are designed so students can seek to investigate and dig to develop solutions for problems they are interested in. This year many of our local organizations approached us to discuss issues that currently face our community. Many of the topics they approached us with coincided with some of the more socially attuned students we have as scholars. These topics involve food insecurity, litter/trash/pollution in our local waterways, and how to make a meaningful impact reducing our community’s carbon footprint. As students investigate these challenges and local issues, they have heard or will hear about different perspectives from various STEM professionals: farmers, environmental scientists, local professionals/politicians, local organizations, business owners, etc. The exposure to multiple perspectives enriches student understanding of the project topics that the students are developing feasible solutions for, giving them a wider scope of comprehension of the multifaceted issues that are connected to the problem. Students have also been exposed to various STEM professionals through field trips such as the CARP Program and Career Cafe. CARP (Career Awareness and Readiness Program) is designed to raise students’ level of awareness of career opportunities in McDowell County. Those who are selected, learn not just about careers, but also about their own skills and how those skills relate to the world of work. By the end of the program, each student is able to identify career opportunities and the education required to pursue those careers. The Career Cafe is another program where members of the community, including many STEM professionals, come and talk to our scholars during lunch. It is a laid back, relaxed atmosphere where students can move from professional to professional and ask them questions about their job. These questions range from the needed educational level to job satisfaction, to the most important as far as middle schoolers are concerned, how much can they make?
Even outside of our projects and these other opportunities, our teachers strive to connect the North Carolina Essential Standards and North Carolina Standard Course of Study with the world our students live in. Every subject looks for links they can exploit to drive home the fact that education prepares you for life. One example of this is FCS’s participation in the Trout in the Classroom project. We have teamed up with the 4H so all of our scholars can learn firsthand about the lifecycle of trout. Wildlife professionals come and share their knowledge with are classes and prove that what they are learning about in the classroom is the same thing they do every day for their job. Another example or real life in the classroom would be our social studies teachers use of McDowell County economics to drive home the point of how much education you would need in order to live in McDowell County. This lesson is based on a simulation run by the State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina. The original simulation though used statistics for North Carolina as a whole. Our Social Studies teachers took this format and adjusted it to reflect the situation in which our scholars actually live.

Evidence: Learning Connected to the Real World

Trout in the Classroom - Blue ridge Atoms 4H

FCS is part of a statewide program for trout in the classroom. We are responsible for raising eggs and small fry until releasing into the wild at the Catawba River. Students had to figure out the feeding ratios based on the amount of eggs. Students had to maintain daily balance and temperature for the fish to survive.

In ELA, students leave FCS prepared for the learning in the real world because we have a strong focus on writing. It will not matter if a student is super talented at engineering or creating if her/his resume won't get him an interview. Our ELA assignments are connected to the real world. For example, the assignment below is connected to the real world. The assignment is meant for students to really think about what information is being presented to them in the news and on social media. Students were asked to determine if the sources were reliable sources and the author's purpose for presenting the information. It is the student's responsibility to be educated on the matters that are happening around them to be a good citizen.

As Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Edward Carrington January 16, 1787) stated, "Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature." We strive to teach students how to not only be able to read, but to take the information given to them to delineate and evaluate the specific claim to effectively form their own opinion/hypothesis/theory. The students are then taught how to write their opinions/theories/hypothesis so they move from the consumer to the producer of 21st century information.

[Template] Tone and Mood

Year and years ago, as kids, we did not know the jobs available. What were the jobs told to kids? Teaching. Cop. Doctor. When we do not tell our students of ll the job available, we do a disservice to their dreams. At FCS, we expose our students to a wide variety of jobs including stem jobs in a variety of ways. We take our students to the jobs, but we also hold Career Cafes so that outside professionals can come talk to our students. The demographics in our community is mostly poverty. Studies have shown that schools and educators can have a big impact on kids. It is our goal as educators to take the actions to help our less-advantaged students succeed and dream big! Educating children on the career options and the stem career options is so important. Part of the interaction is teaching social skills. For example, before each social interaction (e.g., pair-share or buddy teaching), ask students to make eye contact, shake hands, and give a greeting. At the end of each interaction, have students thank their partners. We have conversations about not asking our visitors how much money they make. Instead, we teach them to ask the salary of the profession.

By high school, students should know about 60,000 to 100,000 words. But that doesn't often happen in low-income homes. In lower-income homes, it is found that caregivers speak in shorter, more grammatically simple sentences. There is less back-and-forth— fewer questions asked and fewer explanations given. As a result, children raised in poverty experience a more limited range of language capabilities and are limited to what they are exposed to. Our passion at FCS is to explicitly expose our children to stem jobs available so that the students know there is something bigger and something that they can do that will meet their interest.

Exploring

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Solving real world Problems

Students created solutions to the food production problems.

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