Last week, I filled in for a government class over at the Henderson campus of the College of Southern Nevada High School. Students at CSNHS come from all over Clark County and have already completed their first two years of high school. They apply for admission during their 10th grade year and ,if accepted, have an opportunity to complete a two-year degree while they finish their last two years of high school, all on the district's dime.The program appeals to students who find the normal high school experience tedious and pointless, look forward to more flexible class scheduling options, and are self-motivated enough to tackle a heavier course load with less adult oversight. It's a pretty good deal.
One of the students asked me, "Mr. Rice, what do you like teaching better, high school or college?"
I taught or trained plenty of post-secondary students during my 25 years in the Air Force, and I taught roughly 1,200 high school students in my 5.5 years at Spring Valley High School. I have only been teaching in higher education for 7 weeks. I loved mentoring and teaching and training and guiding and leading in the Air Force. The outcomes there were immediately tangible and almost always positive. But the kid had asked me to choose between college and high school teaching.
I found the answer came quickly: college.
My reasons are pretty predictable, not fully fleshed out, and in no particular order:
- High school students have no buy-in since they cannot easily grasp where or how their education is being funded. This tends to result in high school students comparing high school to prison. While this analogy is inaccurate, one can see how they might, in their naivete, arrive at the conclusion. Because they often perceive high school as something they are forced to do rather than an opportunity they get to do, more than a few students work diligently to avoid learning anything while "incacerated."
- Most high school students have not experienced the difference between having a formal education and not having one. Young college students have at least been convinced that a higher education is beneficial and thus put some effort into succeeding. Adult students who have experienced years in the working world often put much more effort into succeeding. I am still amazed at how quickly my college students pick up concepts that before would have taken all year to pass along to high school kids.
- College students are free to come and go and completely shoulder the benefit or loss as a result.
- High school classes are constantly being interrupted by requests for students to go to the Deans' office or the counselor or to see the coach or help set up for an event or to head off to a rally.
- College students don't get parent-teacher conferences and I don't need entertain parental complaints about the appropriateness or pedagogical validity or challenging nature of my coursework. Students are expected to take those issues up with me directly.
- College classes don't take on a revolving door of transient students.
- As a college instructor, I am not expected to keep an additional set of entrance and exit books that could easily fall out of balance with the high school registrar's books, force students to comply with arbitrary dress codes, ask for parental permission to show video clips that contain taboo language. The bureaucracy, at least at my level, is almost zero. High schools, on the other hand, expect teachers to share a larger and larger part of the daily administrative load.
- My college doesn't filter the Internet or restrict where I or my students can roam. As a high school teacher, I could rarely use my classroom computer to assemble lesson plans because, and this is ironic given the push in education to integrate engaging technology, image and video search functions were disabled. Of course, lessons involving writing for public consumption were severely restricted because all major social networking sites were also blocked.
And yes, I am aware of the pitfalls of college instruction as well. Perhaps a blog will be in order after I trip into one.
