On Youth and Teens Today with Vanessa Van Petten

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I was in San Francisco this weekend and was reading the Chronicle over brunch and saw an article that I wanted to briefly post about.  It was called: “At S.F high chool, shop class is retooled for new generation.“  The article describes how Shop Class teachers today need to keep kids interested and decided to change the curriculum of their normal shop class to include CD package design, making musical instruments and building computer desks.

I think a major problem facing schools right now is how to keep kids interested in listening to a teacher lecture when they are used to having everything so high paced.  Have you watched MTV recently?  Only a few years ago, there was a few hundred images in a single music video, now there are a few thousand.  When I tried watching some MTV this weekend, I was mesmerized and couldn’t take my eyes off the screen because the images were flashing and moving so quickly.

I often, I know this is sick, will write a post on the internet, chat with friends on aim, listen to a podcast and have CNN on in the background all at the same time.  My mom walked in a few days ago and thought I was doing a test to see if my electrical plugs could handle the output.  I didn’t even realize there was so many things on.

I know that I have a lot of teachers who read my blog and wanted to maybe do a few posts on how to keep kids interested in the classroom?  I am not sure if this will be of interest to my parent readers, but I have a few ideas for teachers, home-school families and I think parents can even benefit when they want to help their kids through homework or teach their kids about a particular subject like current events.

Any interest?