Technolandy

Day 14 (of SOL 2025) Summer of Learning… Dear Dr  @chrkennedy  post-graduate struggles

In his annual year end blog, Chris had some good questions… here is question 

14. Why do some of our best students struggle after graduation and what can we do about it?

First response: school continues to be less connected to the rest of life. No phones and no AI (sorry – copilot is okay🙄) so while we express the importance of doing well in school… are we really preparing students to be ready for a next year that needs X skills that we can predict with less certainty based on a curriculum that is already passing a decade of use. What does the 22nd century learner need to know? 

Tricky response – first the shift from a supportive predictable environment for 13 years ties in with a lot of neuro and biological challenges. There is a hope that students learn independence but too often the structure of schools doesn’t allow much of that – a structure that values high scores in the game of school (the prize being a governor generals award for top mark!) 

Philosophical rant: When we focus on the grade, we aren’t focused on the learning – and university people I have spoken to comment that their own four year graduation rates are not where they wish them to be because their entry is typically based on the transcript… my two girls who went to starkly different schools (high end engineering vs high end art) both had one application requirement in common: a portfolio. Show us what you’ve done, not what you hope to do… if we focus on students taking and showing what they have learned, it helps show that they can do more than regurgitate a boring 5 paragraph essay and instead explore why they would choose to use that format.

Alternative wonder: Maybe we need to do what Scotland does and provide a 10-12 “gap year” to explore what you need for independent success? Maybe the recipe card for a dogwood degree doesn’t fit as well as we hoped it would… kinda like provincial exams – made sense until it was realized that they didn’t really have much of a positive impact and influence on students post-graduation (heck, I was an early example having been exempted from provincial exams at their height of “necessity” and doing okay based on my aggregate scores….