Education
Fueling the Body and Mind in the School of the Future
A healthy diet. Regular exercise. Unplugging from technology. Sound familiar? Those are all things that adults know they should do. The same goes for kids, but just like grownups, they can fall short — sometimes through no fault of their own. But schools are helping pick up the slack — providing nutritious meals, getting kids…
Educators And Execs Welcome Workforce Development Collaboration
“Our students are not widgets!” Certainly that is the sentiment of educators who see business involvement in schools as “putting in orders” for workers. Yet that refrain might be less common in an era when the whole notion of career and technical education is evolving way beyond shop class. Maybe that’s because each side understands…
Southwest High was Once a Premier School. What Happened?
It boasts notable graduates, including acclaimed rapper Tech N9ne, the wealthy founders of H&R Block and celebrated journalist Calvin Trillin. Now Southwest High School is in decay and part of a heated debate about the future of public education in Kansas City. The building still looks beautiful on the outside. Towering Corinthian columns and a…
Candidates to Replace Sly James Compete for Likes
The idea seemed far-fetched when it was first suggested in October to East High School teacher Katharine Perna. What if her multiculturalism and social justice class could persuade the nine leading mayoral candidates to answer questions, in person, crafted by the students themselves? On Wednesday night, before an audience of about 150 people in the…
Grading the Soft Skills
It’s the time-honored question from students: when are we going to use this in real life? But as we have seen in this season of Take Note, schools are increasingly focused on the “soft” skills that are relevant for the workplace, such as critical thinking and team work. That brings up another question for the…
A Role For City Hall
Google Fiber, the new streetcar and a booming downtown have all helped Kansas City recruit talented young people, Mayor Sly James said when a group of mayors sat down to talk about workforce development at Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s Conference on Economic Development. Not so long ago, he observed, people moved to a place because…
Blue Collar Jobs Make (Lots Of) Cents
What would you say to making $18 per hour after less than half a year of postsecondary training? Or $35 an hour in a union job? Those aren’t hypotheticals. Workforce experts say those jobs exist in the Kansas City area, and workers are in demand. One of the biggest hurdles in matching people with those…
Poor Report Card
Educators from around Missouri were brutally honest when they met as a panel at Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s Conference on Economic Development. Many of the state’s schools, including the ones they lead, are not doing enough to prepare students to succeed beyond graduation. When he came to Kansas City two years ago to lead the…
Are School Buildings Obsolete?
A “school without walls” is typically a euphuism for a building that substitutes collaborative learning for the standard approach of stationing teachers in front of a classroom full of students. But the internet age has brought us to a point where walls literally are superfluous — where students do their work online as part of…
Building A Better Future
Clyde McQueen seethed recently when an employer — a friend, no less — moved 20 welding jobs to Iowa. “Because we didn’t have enough welding classes going on,” McQueen told an audience at Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s Conference on Economic Development in Kansas City recently. As the chief executive of Kansas City’s Full Employment Council,…