What's goin' on in schools today?

    Today's schools are dedicated  to making the educational experience of students more vibrant and viable than ever before. Faced with the possibility of accessible information doubling every eighteen months, schools need to prepare students to be able to understand and use the information they have available to them to become  responsible citizens of the human community.

In order to accomplish this goal, schools are asking students to become more accomplished at a younger age. Parents are sometimes shocked when their children are expected to do things that parents learned much later in their school career. Examples include learning some algebra in first grade, or working on the theory and practice of multiplication from kindergarten through fourth grades, rather than beginning multiplication in fifth grade as students did in the 1950s.

Students are expected to read well and read often. Cloquet has literature and non-fiction reading expectations at every grade level and for most courses. Accelerated Reader helps students and teachers in grades 1-8 to know that the trade books students read are at a level where understanding can occur efficiently.

Students' use of technology often is more advanced than their parents' ability and some of the coursework offered in public schools today is much more sophisticated than many adults encountered when they attended school. Examples include CAD Drafting, Honors Chemistry (offered for college credit), and Aries.

In an attempt to help parents begin to understand the changes happening in schools today, Cloquet will use this portion of the website to begin to share some of the overviews of basic curriculums and special units being offered today. This is a large task and one that will start at the beginning: the elementary school years. Information about middle and high school courses will be added in the future or are available on some teacher webpages. Since all school employees have many jobs besides the main one they were hired for, this project will take more time than it would in the private sector. Please be patient with us.

(Artwork found at www.foundationews.org)