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7/16/11 - Week 5 Questions

1. How can your business (or others) be more involved in your classroom?

I would love to bring in guest speekers for certain topics. The kids get used to hearing me every day, but if I brought in someone from the world outside of education, I think it would be motivating and show the kids a differnt perspective as well as make that content even more authentic and relevant.

2. What can you or your school do to engage students in the real world?

Field trips would be great. I would love to do a project based lesson where students had to do some research in Hy-Vee on something like signs and involve Geometric Probability or do something with area or volume and how the store is set up. It would be neat to actually take a day to go to the grocery store and do some research and measuring and even ask the employees some questions.

I think the easier way of getting students engaged in the real world is to give them assignments and ask them questions that make them think about the real world and make connections.

3. What can the real world (our externship hosts) do to engage students in their world?

I think Hy-Vee already does a great job of this. I got to visit a Hy-Vee career fair recently. They have booths set up to show the employees the other options available and all the different departments. Hy-Vee has quite a few employees that started out as cashiers and worked their way up. They are actively employeeing quite a few high school students that are learning those important soft skills necessary in the world outside of school.

I think all business can continue to improve on engaging students in their world by being willing to be involved with local schools, make students aware of all the different occupations involved in what they do.

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