Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Children with adult responsibilities

Recently I've observed what I sense may be a growing theme among high school and college students. Almost all of my 16-year-old son's friends work - and many of them have to. The vast majority of my college students work multiple part-time jobs or a full-time job in addition to a full load.

This is not like the days of ole' when I was in high school when kids only worked during the summer or maybe weekends. Kids today have more responsibilities and multiple demands on their time.

Given that, what happens when we as facilitators begin to treat high school and college students as adult learners - at least in the andragogical terms of tying new learning concepts to existing knowledge and experience, explaining why something is important to learn and getting buy-in before beginning learning experiences, etc.

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