Working at Scholastic means that every single day, I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by a love of reading and learning. Around here, we all have education, students, and teachers at the forefront of our minds; as such, there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about the skills I learned in elementary, middle, and high school and send a silent thank you to the teachers I've had along the way. Some of the obvious skills--like reading, writing, and arithmetic--certainly come in handy on a day-to-day basis, but more than that, there are fleeting moments when I remember something specific from one of my classes and feel a jolt of gratitude for the teacher.
I feel really lucky to say the number of influential teachers I've had is huge: Mr. Bandoni, Mr. Shawe, Mr. Gray, Mr. Ioli, Ms. Blakslee, Mr. Compton, Mr. Beerntsen, Mr. Sappenfield... I could go on for ages. But I can still see Mr. Morris's 9th grade grammar packet clearly (Synechdoche: Use of part to represent the whole. E.g. The White House regrets any and all errors). I still think of Mrs. Rapson whenever I do long-division or Mrs. Macasata when I cross-multiply; I hear Mr. Schindel's voice when someone starts talking about U.S. history, and Sr. Gordon's when I try to conjugate an irregular verb in Spanish.
But what about the things we learn in school that we think (or hope!) we'll never need to know "in the real world"? For me, it was Latin. What was I, as a 7th grader, supposed to do with a language that was no longer spoken? But when the SATs rolled around, I was immediately grateful for the hours Ms. Noonan had encouraged us to spend memorizing vocabulary words.
In a similar vein, I asked my fellow OOMers to weigh in on the things they learned in school that they thought they'd never really need to know. Their responses were pretty great:
Kristen: I confess: when I was in school, I hoped I’d never need to know anything about math in general--it wasn’t my strongest subject. Now I’m glad I retained at least some of the things I learned since I use it in everything from budgeting to cooking to sale shopping (calculating the percent off of a price is a specialty of mine!).
Megan: My school was very good about having all of us keep a planner. They would inspect ours to make sure we wrote down all of our classes and assignments and I really am glad for it. It's helped me keep my work and personal schedules organized later in life.
Nadia: I use estimation all the time now--something I didn’t think was that important when I was in elementary school. When I’m getting groceries, I try to estimate how much my total basket will cost so I can stay within my budget (not always effective though!).
Mike: Mythology! The amount of mythology (Greek, Roman, Nordic, Celtic, etc.) that's in our everyday culture is astounding. (I even went into a monologue recently at our staff meeting about the snowstorms being named after prominent Greek gods/goddesses and demigods. Hello, Janus and Hercules!)
Alex: In middle school, my school provided a boating safety and licensing course. It essentially gave students a boating permit, which is pretty neat (and smart!) since my town is located on the Jersey Shore. Those skills definitely still come in handy today!
Morgan: Statistics! Turns out percentages and probability are a lot more useful in everyday life than I thought they were back in high school...
Brittany: In middle school, my history teacher made us memorize the map of the United States. We were quizzed on it four times throughout his class! It’s definitely come in handy because I never would have taken the initiative myself to memorize the states, capitals, national landmarks and all of their locations!
How about you? What do you remember learning, thinking you'd never need to remember it? And how do you use it in your life now? Most of all, a huge THANK YOU to the many teachers who've encouraged us, inspired us, and drilled the essentials into us.
