Most kids don’t willingly ask their grandfathers to retell his “endearing” story about how he used to trudge uphill to school every day through ten feet of snow. But last Thursday, students jumped at the opportunity to interview their older relatives as part of StoryCorps’s “Great Thanksgiving Listen,” and have uploaded more than thirty-seven thousand stories to date. Apart from giving kids a reason to avoid post-feast dish duties, StoryCorps aimed to bolster the collection of verbal histories it’s been gathering for the last decade. With applicability to history, government, civics, and journalism curricula, students and teachers were encouraged to participate in collecting their family’s narratives, which will be archived in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. For those expecting stories of slushy drudgery, the results were surprisingly rewarding. Students heard tales of living through the Great Depression and the personal battles of growing up in poverty- and violence-afflicted neighborhoods. So while you spent Thanksgiving in an insulin-induced coma, your niece was learning how to be both a historian and a journalist.
Those who can’t teach can study law, business, or medicine at Harvard—because teacher training is basically rocket science. That’s the spirit behind Harvard University’s new teacher training program, which enrolls students in a three-year fellowship combining pedagogy with mentor-guided practice in middle school and high school. The program is being hailed as a souped-up version of Teach For America (whose enrollment numbers are declining), despite the Harvard TFA recruitment manager’s insistence that the two programs can coexist. The program is free to fellows thanks to $18 million from anonymous donors. Hey, it’s their money. But if that’s what it costs to adequately prepare a handful of teachers, we’re doomed. Perhaps Harvard’s considerable brain power and vast resources might be applied figuring out how to make mere mortals successful in the classroom.
Could the key to economic development lie in training our workforce while they’re still young and impressionable? Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has made that great leap of faith in his recent plan to expand career education, workforce training, and economic development. The plan would bring together leaders from government, business, and education to address workforce needs using the strapping youths of high school and collegiate STEM, vocational, and CTE programs. There’s also the added bonus of upward mobility: Check out those head-turning starting salaries and the increased rate of postsecondary education attendance. All eyes should be focused on Massachusetts to see what comes of Baker’s proposals.
