Originally published March 6th 2023
How do our middle school students think about the future? Superintendent Pekel visited our middle schools to find out. Watch the second installment of Supt In the Halls to see what he learned!
Please take a moment to watch the second edition of Supt in the Halls featuring our middle school students.
As students get older and move through school, it is vitally important to help them Think Forward, Act Now. The importance of helping students achieve that objective is rooted in a large body of research that shows that adolescents (and, to a lesser thought still significant extent, adults as well) have high aspirations for the future but do not take the incremental steps they need to take in the present to realize those aspirations. Fortunately, studies have also shown that there are things we can do to help students close the gap between their future aspirations and current actions. For example, helping students to form positive visions of their future lives has been shown to produce important changes in youth attitudes and behaviors, as well as significant improvements in outcomes such as grades, attendance rates, discipline rates, and grade-to-grade completion rates. If extended over time, those changes in youth attitudes and behaviors can contribute to improvements in life-changing outcomes such as high school graduation rates and postsecondary enrollment rates. The capacity to think forward, act now is especially important for students who must overcome barriers such as poverty and racism to achieve success in school and in life.
Questions to Discuss After Watching Supt in the Halls 2
- What job do you hope to be doing when you are about thirty years old? What appeals to you about this job?
- What do you think you will do for fun when you are a young adult? What do you like about that activity?
- What is the biggest problem you think your generation will have to face in the future? Why are you concerned about it?
- Who do you admire that you would like to be like in the future? What do you admire most about this person?