Like it says in my profile, I teach. When you read that, your memory likely belched up a batch of ideas and beliefs, experiences and stories involving maybe your own education. Schools you loved or hated. Maybe teachers who were great or terrible. Could be your child's experience you think of. Everyone has an opinion and if they don't, they should.
A lot of teachers went into the profession because they always wanted to teach. They loved setting their dolls or younger siblings up to play school, wandering down the pen 'n pencil aisle at the supermarket. . . you know, crap like that. Not me. I hated school as a student. The older I got, the more I fought the system. Most times the system won. It took me a while, but I learned that the best way to change it is from the inside. Don't complain about it - wade in and fix it.
I work only with teenagers. Junior High, mostly. Kids that have been labeled - for whatever reason by whatever authority - as "at risk." Of what? All sorts of things. At risk of expulsion, of dropping out, of shooting up, of giving up. At risk of being another statistic. There's all sorts of scary research out there that maps out the rest of their lives if they keep falling behind. Lower salaries, shorter life expectancy, greater risk of incarceration, greater risk of perpetuating the cycle they found themselves in. Those are my boys.
Now, the reason this post isn't couched down in Introductions is because I want your help. This does apply to a forum on General Survival Discussion. In almost twelve years of doing this, I've come across some things that hook my boys immediately and permanently. (90% of the teens I work with are male . . . something that should send chills up your spine. How have we failed our sons and why?) On the first day of class, I give them a scenario very similar to some of the games we play in these forums. I give them tools to pick from, a situation to survive in, and a chance to explain. Then I have a lot of fun telling them all the colorful and hideous ways they just died. Then I point them to resources that they can read and watch and hear - and let them go at it again. Of course, then I have to teach them the mental tools to read, watch, and hear better. To explain their thoughts and back up their assertions. In Teacher-Speak, you could say my goal is to halt their educational decline, address their deficiencies as literate individuals, and improve high stakes testing scores. Me, I just want to teach them to think - to care - and to learn for their own reasons. Once they do that, everything else follows.
Here is where you come in. Improve my library of information to put in front of these guys. Post titles, websites, youtube links, or stories of your own that I will take back to my boys. School is starting up again and I'll have about a hundred pairs of eyes on me in a few weeks. I'm considering linking this forum as a part of the class, give them an authentic way to learn and discuss, but that'll come later. (What better way to show how much you think, care, and know about something than a place like this? Sure beats a multiple-choice test.) Right now, give me what you got. I'll use this thread to give you guys updates and share progress with this new crew of mine.
I already have quite a bit. Certain primary texts are the SAS Survival Handbook and the US Military's FM 21-76 Survival manual and a few other manuals that I found for a good price at various Surplus shops. The Game and Fish Commission sends me sets of all sorts of publications that they make available to the general public, and I have a couple of hunter's ed. books. They read McManus and Paulsen and entirely too many other authors to list - because you can learn things from fiction as well as non-fiction. But don't hold back from posting everything. There's more I haven't thought of. If you have questions of your own, drop those as well.
Thanks.
