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Guest Post by Michael Benko. He is the co-founder of the Student Success Academy, a modern consulting solution that allows high school students to leverage their education and build a personalized plan for the future.
The spring of 2011 was the first time I came to the realization that the first 22 years of my life were fairly planned out. High school, college, then...? I was reading a book on Martin Luther King Jr at the time and discovered that Dr. King was shown the right way to go about social change when he met Dr. Benjamin Mayes at the age of 14. Dr. Mayes, President of Morehouse College and influential social activist, took the time to invest in Dr. King to emphasize the long-term vision behind King's short-term action. King's education was just part of his overall mission for equality and not a means to an end.
We all need a Dr. Mayes to focus on life past education, but in America we have one high school counselor, or should I say one Benjamin Mayes, to every 471 high school students. Education focuses on K-16, often times leaving out the rest of life.
In his recent TED talk, Bill Gates stated that "everyone needs a coach. It doesn't matter whether you are a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast, or a bridge player. We all need people who will give us feedback. That's how we improve." Gates is not talking about a coach that helps you and 470 other people out at one time nor coaches you for only short-term results. He is talking about a coach that invests in your life even if it means going through growing pains in the present.
Why a Decrease in Personalized Attention?
The reason schools have 1 high school counselor to every 471 students is they are focused on test results. Counselors are supposed to help students with life post education, but we have so little because education is all about the here and now. K-16. Schools are ranked based on their test scores, not the amount of real world readiness students they have, resulting in a steady decrease of post secondary solutions.
What do we do? High school students are making some of their toughest post secondary decisions with an average of 38 minutes with their counselor. This person is overbooked, and has nothing similar to talk about. So instead of succeeding our students are checking out. 6.5 million teens are not in school or work. And of for those who are lucky enough to go to college only 56 percent will graduate with a degree in 6 years or less. American education is rooted in test scores, so how do we increase the efficiency of our current counseling system?
How to focus on the future with what we have
1. Technology
Counselors still work in an industrial age. They are in separate parts of the building and have little interaction with students on a daily basis. They meet with students face to face and often times do not pull that students profile up until they walk into the office. As schools we need to think more like businesses.
In his famous small business book E-Myth, Michael Gerber states that most new companies fail because the owner only works IN the business and never ON the business. Put another way, the business owner is focused on getting by each day instead of thinking long term. Technology allows counselors and administrators to view, comment, and share relevant information with students at their fingertips at ten times the efficiency.
2. University Students
Lack of personalized learning and gerneational gap difference plague school systems. Personalized learning is way too expensive and even if unlimited funds were available counselors often times face the issue of relating with students. Students need a 'one level up' mentor for personalized planning. Someone who is young enough to relate yet mature enough to guide them in the right direction.
3. Post-Secondary Curriculum
Set aside the rigorous test curriculum for a set of time throughout each day (take a deep breadth, it does not have to be an entire class period) and allow students to start building a personalized road map for their future around an open-ended curriculum. Students will enjoy school more and start to see the value in education aside from getting a grade.
Lets make the most of our future generations and focus not just on kindergarten through 16, but rather kindergarten through life. We need to increase one-onone attention in classrooms and allow students to explore their true calling in purpose in life at an early age. Each student needs personalized attention from someone who cares in order to maximize his or her potential.
