Response to Smagorinsky's Notes on Preparation for Future Needs

Something Smagorinsky touches on in the reading for this week that has impacted me especially throughout the teaching program is the idea that teachers may justify units for how they will benefit students in terms of what skills they will need in the future. Smagorinsky writes, "One reason that teachers often give for teaching something is that it will help students succeed in college. . . [but] it doesn't help those who don't go to college (145)." Last week, Professor Olson noted that only 25% of Americans hold a Bachelor's degree, which only reminded me of the popular phrase, college is not for everybody. This is one condition that I am trying hard to prepare for when creating meaningful units for students. But although many future students that I teach will not be making plans to go to college right after high school, I still have faith that they will be able to apply good reading and writing skills in their lives in various ways. In developing prompts for the class unit, I try to be mindful of opportunities in which students may produce business letters, express themselves artistically through drama, music, or dance,  make speeches about important issues, write manuals on how to do something, or even write memos.

I also chose Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, which offers simple yet invaluable views on how to work well with and connect with others. Whether reading this book in its own light or synthesizing it with Twisted (my young adult novel) or Romeo and Juliet, I think it may prove meaningful to many students trying to figure out how they can become assets in various businesses when just starting out in the professional world.

In general, I think it is always important to present options in prompting students to write. While some students might embrace writing in ways that can help them connect with fiction in creative and abstract ways, there will always be the students that want to know how what they do in school will benefit them in real life. To accommodate everybody, students could either write a business letter to Romeo to offer their professional expertise to help him overcome his woes of love, or to the local mechanic with whom they are seeking part-time employment.