Get Your Students Hired
Hi Chris,
This is sometimes a hard concept for people to understand. People are different and as a result of the differences they use their knowledge and skills in different ways. This is why some individuals stay with one employer for their entire career doing the same work. Others start their own businesses, move up in companies, etc. It is how each of us use our talents and the skills we have to "grow" our careers in relation to what our goals are.
Gary
Teaching in a shop environment I can use the group idea that has been suggested in another post in this forum (grouping the different levels together and allowing the students to "levelset themselves" or I can allow the slower to work at their own pace and the faster to move forward. When I first started I made sure that I assigned shop groups to levelset the class, now I tend not to do that, I allow the students to pick their own groups - I find that by assigning groups I am sometimes unintentionally punishing those who have more skills by holding them back with those that don't.
Perhaps we need to face reality that every student who graduates from our program will graduate with the same basic skills; but they will have different levels of understanding and different outcomes. This sort of makes sense because they are different people coming into the program.
One way in which I try to deal with this issue is to encourage my "smarter" students to answer questions - then ask the "mid-level" students to breakdown the answers given - while encouraging the "lower level" students to ask further questions, to respond to what the "mid-level" students are saying. Sometimes getting the "slower" students to participate is hard - but always seems worth the effort.
Hi Tracy,
This is a question that challenges all teachers. How to blend all of the students' needs into learning opportunities. One way of doing this is to assign students to groups that can work together using everyone's strengths and experiences. Another is to offer case studies or problem solving situations. This way students with different abilities can use their expertise and newly acquired knowledge in the different applications.
Gary