Great American Teach-In at IMS 11/17/2010
On Wednesday, November 17th, 2010, I had the opportunity to spend the day at Inverness Middle School participating in the “Great American Teach-In” (GATI) put together by Arnold and Mary-Ann Virgilio of Inverness. Mr. & Mrs. Virgilio have spent years volunteering at our schools and coordinating this wonderful annual event.
Adult community members from every walk of life participated in the GATI: sheriff deputies, attorneys, interior decorators, newspaper publishers, doctors, helicopter pilots, medical technicians, business professionals, all the school board members and many others. Each person spent time sharing what they do, what their background was and how important school was to their success.
I had the pleasure of speaking first in Mr. Craig Jaworski’s Geography class. Then I spent the next several class periods in Ms. Melissa Pfeiffer-Hermann’s American History class. I walked away excited about the great thinkers we have in these students.The students were most engaged and enthusiastic. I shared with the students the structure of a school board and, school system and how it compares to the branches of our federal government. We talked about the duties and responsibilities of the school board and the superintendent and how they differ. I shared about my business background and experiences and how skills I learned in each job played an important part in positions that followed. I was so impressed with the knowledge and out of the box thinking of the students. I encouraged them to continue to learn technology and use their computers as learning tools. I challenged them to learn how to make a word-processing documents, Power Point presentations, and spreadsheet files. I also advised them to make interesting YouTube mini movies and podcasts. I explained that these are the types of tools that they will regularly use in their future careers and they need to begin learning them right now.
Each of us has a responsibility to encourage our students about continually learning. They really are our future and we must not let them down!
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