We ARE always learning

What if school for "troubled youth" wasn't somewhere that was just recreating the traditional school framework that these kids are struggling with anyway? Our public system claims that it identifies strengths and "needs", as if then we use the strengths to being up the "needs". But is this really what we do? Those of us who are special ed teachers do our best to facilitate the lessening of kids "needs" within a system that sees this is as our goal. But what if our goal was really to strengthen the strengths? Then I believe we would see real growth in our kids, real interest, real motivation. Out of the box people need out of the box solutions. We need to be learning how to learn, not memorizing facts for a test. Real life goals create their own benchmarks, as people then desire to acquire the knowledge they need to reach them. So, instead of teaching what we think are skills or knowledge that "everyone" should know, and then expecting students to graduate and figure out what they want to do with the skills/knowledge, we should be finding out what students want to know how to do, and help them get the skills and knowledge they need to get there. Example: Almost all kids want money and believe on some level that they will grow up and be rich. So....how do you manage a checkbook? What kind of income do different jobs bring in? How do you learn how to invest money? How do your figure out the ratio of debt to income? What are the pitfalls of a credit driven industry...see how it starts to morph from what do I need to know for me to how does my government handle its money? Anyway, food for thought.