Overall--Workforce Development

The end of Workforce Development has left me sad because the journey to get to the end was rich with so much information about what we should be doing to educate our children. I've discovered that a lot of the standardized testing that we do doesn't mean a thing to our students once we send them out into the real world. If this is the only form of assessment that you provide for your students, you are leaving them poorer beyond a shadow of a doubt. I hear how students aren't prepared when they start their first job, and even though I thought I had an idea why, this course really opened my eyes as to why so many of our young people fail at their first position or struggle immensely and believe they can't do it. I understand that it's often just easier to tell them how to do it or what to do, but doing that is giving them a large disadvantage because they aren't learning how to do it on their own. This is where change needs to happen...

Even though I honestly tried to be "outside of the box" with assessments before this class, taking this class has pushed me even more towards using performance-based assessments and learning more about what my students know and think. I've asked "What would you do?" and "What do you think?" and "Why?" more in the last eight weeks than I have since August. If anything, that shows that I agree with what I have learned.

I used many of the videos that were shown in class with my colleagues and even used two with my students. For me, this was the greatest resource that I could see transferring into my teaching. A lot of the articles were good; however, I struggle to use them in my class because of the technical language of some and others would be over my students' heads. I did use some researching time to find some articles that will fit into my reading classes without leaving my students stumped.

I have used webquests in my classes before; however, I really like the concept of the QuickQuest because it's designed for a lot shorter time in the classroom. In fact, I created a WebQuest during this course titled "Life After College." During that webquest, students had to figure out where they were going to college and what degree they were going to earn. After graduating, their job was to figure out how to live and if they could afford to live by figuring out rent, insurance, taxes, student loan payments, utilities, car payments, etc. I was surprised to see that many of my students thought they would start off with a job paying them $4,000-5,000 a month! Then I have surprised to learn about the number of students that didn't realize that they had more expenses than income and weren't concerned about it...Overall, I believe this webquest opened every person's eyes to what life is really like as an adult and as a student. If you want to learn more, go to the Life After College link in the section below and visit my webquest.

Timing for me was rolling along smoothly until we had a personal tragedy in my family that rocked us all back a little bit. Thankfully, I have been able to get back on track without losing too much time. I stayed the course so well because the resources and assignments held great value to me. I could always see the end product and understand why the process was going the way that it was. Thanks for that!

I wouldn't recommend any changes to this class at all, and I would recommend it highly to others: check out Workforce Development through the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Becky knows how to keep it moving!

Thanks!