1. The document discusses the role of schools in preparing students for future careers and the disconnect that currently exists between school curriculum and workplace skills.
2. It emphasizes that schools should help students try different activities to gain experience in various fields and determine their interests and strengths, rather than having parents dictate career paths.
3. The document also stresses the importance of schools providing real-world projects, mentorship opportunities, and examples of success stories to help build students' self-confidence in choosing and pursuing their own careers.
3. SAY
1. There is a huge distance between a school and working place, where a person receives
the competence necessary for work, and a school works mainly to identify abilities and
interests of students.
2. Last years we stop asking our primary students WHO YOU WANT TO BE? Now it is
senseless, instead that we ask them about skills ‐ WHAT YOU WISH TO LEARN? And
strangely, students of the first form, led by their parents, can answer this question: I
want to learn to read, to be a leader, to speak English...
3. …advanced parents choose the people who will teach their children.
4. This is very important ‐ not only the skills but also the moral foundations, role models
they can follow...people who could train them to such an extent that they could
improve independently their skills in the field they choose.
5. …between school and work is a huge distance, however, the school must help kids to
try plenty of different activities, so that kids could get their own experience about
what is inside this world of the professions.
6. And it is very important to get away from parental ambitions ‐ I don't know how in the
world, but here in Russia, parents play an important role determining the professional
direction of their children, if only it is not connected with some sport or art or
something else, what children get used to…such professional activities as ballet or
circus...what is the child engaged in from early childhood.
7. it is very important to give children to try themselves in a large variety of practices that
will determine what they will do...if it is a work with people ‐ we need to practice
communication, for a work with information – to practice communications
technologies (ICT), for a work with nature ‐ go to expeditions etc… to entering a work,
they already experience what it means to be a professional in that field.
7. DO
1. She organized two‐year pedagogical internship at the school
2. She personally looks for and selects teachers
3. She turned project works in ubiquitous students activities and now
students' projects go beyond school
4. She develops the game‐based learning at the school
5. She has organized children's summer programs and biological expeditions
to 4 national parks
6. She collects data of success of school alumni after the first year at
Universities
7. She invites alumni of past years to the school
8. She has transformed the school to the learning organization, she supervises
the training of teachers and she continuously learns herself
9. She won several grants to provide for each student more than 1 computer
in her school
10. She works not less than 60 hours a week
11. She is active Facebook user
12. During the interview she had used two smartphones a few times
11. I have interviewed the Principal of a state school, one of the
best in Moscow. She is a young woman firmly standing on her
feet, whose face expresses a strange mixture of fatigue,
determination and dreaminess. She holds office for 10 years
and she has PhD degree, she has no children of their own but
she has the school, where study more than 1,700 children from
3 to 18 years.
She employs more than 200 teachers, managers and
support staff, she spends at work 6 days a week, and her
working day usually lasts more than 10 hours. She has to
integrate all of school staff, students and their parents in the
educational process. She is fond of innovations and especially,
ICT and mobile network lifestyle.
She is a thoughtful and attentive interlocutor, quite open and
sincere.
15. …there is a substantial difference between the interests of the
most important stakeholders. Even the Principal of the school,
connecting in the one person both “school” and “work”, have
strikingly changed when I had asked her opinions from that two
positions.
In confirmation, I present my comments with links to the
statements in the sections SAY, DO, FEEL, THINK, labeling them
by number (according to their numbers in the sections, for
example S3, D2, F5, T8 and so on).
16. •School and work have different objectives (S1, T11).
•Ambitions of parents too much influence the professional
orientation of children (S6, T1, T2, F3, F6), who actually are not
able to consciously choose a direction of the further education
(S11, S12, F11).
•Young graduates from Universities could not immediately start
full-scale operation and are in need of socialization and additional
training (S8, S21, S22, S23, T4, T8, F8). Unfortunately, many of
them are forced to leave the profession (S21).
•Corporate training is forced to compensate for that was not
received by students at the University - mainly in the field of
practical activities (S21, D1).
•School, in turn, limits its role only to formation of common cultural
skills (S15, F2), while trying to provide for the students some
experience from communicating with people demonstrating
examples of professional success (S17, D6, D7).