CHAPTER 1
The Benefits of Academic Extracurricular Activities
DOI: 10.4324/9781003234982-2
Why should students participate in an academic extracurricular activity? Shouldn't what happens during the school day be enough for their education? Don't students need a break from using their brains, some time to be themselves, and some time to relax? This is absolutely the case. Students should be out doing what they are passionate about, whether it be playing video games, rehearsing with their rock band, skateboarding, or participating in a sport. But here is the thing: Many students are passionate about learning. I know—microphone drop, mind blown—but it's true. Some kids want to go more in depth than their classes and teachers provide and explore subjects in more authentic settings.
Educational reasons aside, academic extracurricular activities are fun. What could be more fun than designing a robot that can shoot a basketball 15 feet . . . or submitting for publication your very own short story that you have written? Imagine the rush when the equation you have been studying and tweaking suddenly becomes clear while competing in the National Number Knockout competition. Many academic extracurricular activities are also based on competition, and this competition can be fun and can raise the level of challenge and enjoyment for all involved.
In addition, students get the opportunity to show school spirit by representing their school at the competition. One cannot say that "all gifted students who participate in AECAs lack athleticism," but imagine you are a student who does not care for athletics. What can you do to support your school? What avenue do you have to show school pride? How can you get recognition for skills you have that are not based on athleticism? AECAs give students an outlet to be a bigger part of the school culture and to feel as though they are contributing to the overall reputation of the school.
Fun and pride aside, there are lots of benefits that participating in AECAs provide a student. The most obvious is that AECAs teach a specific skill in a specific subject area depending on the activity in which students are participating. Students might learn about complex math by participating in the Continental Mathematics League, become more familiar with language through the International Linguistics Olympiad, or learn how economics work in the real world through DECA.
21st-Century Skills
I would argue that most AECAs teach students skills that transcend content. Most teach valuable 21st-century skills, learning that may not be happening in the classroom as much as it should. Why are 21st-century skills so important? Because a person is not prevented from being successful in later life if they don't know the answer to a question in the National Geographic Bee, or if they miss a few problems on World Maths Day, or if their Genius Hour project utterly fails. Twenty-first-century skills, however, are extremely important for a student's future. If the student never learns how to effectively communicate orally, they might have difficulty with relationships. If they are poor at collaboration, it could affect their ability to do their job effectively or be viewed as a valuable team member. If they do not show much initiative, they may not earn a future promotion. The student will watch as others who show initiative pass them by. Learning 21st-century skills is important because they are life skills or, as Tony Wagner (2014) referred to them in his book The Global Achievement Gap, survival skills. He maintained that every student should leave the classroom with seven particular skills if they are going to compete in the global marketplace, all of which can be learned by participating in AECAs:
- Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: These should be happening on a daily basis in the classroom, but many would be surprised that they are not. One might think that if you are in a math class working on an equation, you are problem solving, but in actuality you are solving a problem. There is a distinct difference: Problem solving is when something unexpected or challenging is presented and you must try to come up with a creative or innovative solution out of many possibilities. This describes many AECAs, in that they involve students being presented with a dilemma, world issue, challenge, or question, and students must think critically to determine an effective and creative way to solve it. You could have 50 teams using the same prompt, and all 50 of them might come up with a different solution.
- Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence: Can a student work well with others in order to produce something as a group that is better than what could have been done by any one individual? Many AECAs teach collaboration by putting students into a team and requiring them to move the ship as a whole rather than individually paddling. Like a baseball team, no one player is the team. Everyone must do their part in order to succeed. This is a very important skill to possess not only in the workforce, but also in everyday life. No matter where your life takes you, you will encounter some sort of collaboration, whether it be family, friends, or hobbies. In the workplace it is really vital because no company is one person. Companies are made up of multiple employees, all working together for the benefit of the whole. Those companies that are well known for their collaborations are often the most successful. Thus, successful companies want to hire good collaborators.
- Agility and Adaptability: When things don't go their way or as they expected, how good are your students at pivoting and moving forward? Being able to adapt makes students valuable to potential employers. Whether you are a doctor who has to change your course of treatment if a patient does not improve as expected, or a waiter who has a patron who has changed their mind about their meal, things change midcourse and you have to be prepared for it. As a teacher, how many times has something not gone according to plan and you have had to adapt the lesson for a better learning experience? If you're like me, this is an everyday occurrence. Those who are not able to adapt often produce inferior work or simply get left behind. We don't want our students to get left behind. AECAs usually start with an initial problem for students to study, and additional layers of complexity come into play as students progress. Students learn to adapt, as their performance at the competition will look very different then they imagined it would be. Adaptation teaches students grit and perseverance because when things do not go as planned, the team comes up with plan B, C, D, or however many it takes. Students unable to adapt may have trouble when they struggle with real-world problems in the future.
- Initiative and Entrepreneurialism: Initiative is one's ability to take on a task, not because someone has told them or required them to do it, but because it is something they have determined needs to be done or they see the benefit in doing so. Many students involved in AECAs show tremendous initiative just by being there. After all, what they are doing is typically not a requirement; they are choosing to be involved and participate. They give up before- and/or afterschool time. They perform on evenings or weekends. They sacrifice time that they might have spent doing some other leisure activity. Showing initiative relies on the choice of the individual, and students are choosing to be involved. If your AECA is set up well, students will have plenty of opportunity to show initiative. After all, just like sports, it is those who practice the hardest and put in the extra work not required of them who find the most success. There usually is no grade for an AECA, so students need to decide for themselves how far they want to take their work.
- Effective Oral and Written Communication: Being able to communicate orally effectively is a skill not everyone possesses. In fact, it is estimated that as many as 75% of the population has anxiety about speaking in public (Black, 2019). Imagine how valuable you would be to a future employer if you are part of the 25% that isn't. And how do you get better at oral communication? Just like a sport, the more you do it, the more comfortable you become. Putting students in situations where they not only have to perform in spoken form, but also must do so to an authentic audience that brings a real-world application, is a great way to help them learn this skill. Many, but not all, of the AECAs have a performance aspect to them in which students are either presenting to a panel of judges, giving an actual performance to an audience, or having to talk to someone in an authentic situation. This experience will pay off, as students become not only proficient at oral communication, but also able to thrive at it. If there is not an oral aspect, there is usually a written one in which students must show what they have learned. Either way, students must clearly communicate the merits of their solution. Other than collaboration, I feel that communication is one of the most important skills I can teach my students, as not a lot of other teachers focus on this type of performance assessment.
- Accessing and Analyzing Information: This is one's ability to find information as well as determine whether it is reliable. This is a valuable skill to possess because students will spend a lot of their adult lives trying to find information that is going to help them, whether it be determining what sort of house they can purchase, researching a place to take the family for vacation, looking for instructions for changing a faucet head, or just trying to decide which movie to see. Students will also use this skill in their occupation. Doctors have to consider new research and how this might affect the way they practice medicine. Stockbrokers have to study past performances of certain stocks and then make a prediction of how one will perform in the future, deciding whether their client should purchase it or not. Teachers have to find information and strategies for educating their students and make sure what is being provided is accurate. This skill harkens to one of my educational philosophies: Rather than teaching my students facts, I want to teach them where they can find facts for themselves.
- Curiosity and Imagination: Educators do not let students use curiosity and imagination in schools as much as we should. Children are innately curious about the world, especially when they are younger and there is still so much that is unknown. By the time they get to high school, though, a lot of students' curiosity and imagination has been tamped down by content and standards. How often are students allowed to explore their curiosity in a math class? How many times has a student used their imagination in social studies? Out in the business world, it is this curiosity and imagination that lead to new and better products. Where would Apple be without imagination? Where would Elon Musk be without curiosity? Without curiosity and imagination, there wouldn't be any innovations. Things would merely stay the same. Think about a company that is interviewing two candidates. One produces by-the-book products, and another has an innovative imagination, never doing the same thing twice. Which one do you think will be hired?
Not all of the AECAs presented in this book expose students to and teach students all seven of the survival skills, but there are many that do. Let's take Business Professionals of America's Website Design Team competition as an example. In a nutshell, a team must create an effective website based on a prompt. The team must not only develop the website, but also present the website to a panel of experts. The following list breaks down how students will practice all of the survival skills in this competition:
- Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: The team must determine the design and layout of the website, create graphics that are visually attractive to draw people in, and then code the site so that it works effectively. This all involves critical thinking and problem solving. There is no one correct answer for this task. Instead, there are numerous possibilities, and students must analyze and then figure out how to make it all actually work. It requires everyone doing their role and doing it well.
- Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence: This competition is a team effort, so being able to collaborate and lead effectively is tantamount. Without effective teamwork, something may get overlooked, leaving the product incomplete or riddled with errors.
- Agility and Adaptability: The team must adapt to the prompt and make adjustments throughout the course of the competition. The students might make it to the state-level competition and receive valuable feedback on how they can make their site better for the national competition, leading them to improve their product.
- Initiative and Entrepreneurialism: This is a project that cannot be completed just during dedicated AECA time. The students have to take it upon themselves to put in extra work to make sure that their product is of the highest quality without the advisor having to check in constantly.
- Effective Oral and Written Communication: The team must not only have effective written communication on their website so that those navigating it know to use it, but also orally present their website and justify their choices to a panel of experts.
- Accessing and Analyzing Information: The team must conduct research that will be put onto the website in order to inform consumers.
- Curiosity and Imagination: A boring ol' website is not going to cut it. The students must use their imaginations to create something that stands out from the thousands of other participants.
As noted, not all AECAs allow students to practice all of these skills. Some AECAs are individual competitions so collaboration might not come into play. Others may not have an oral aspect to the product. Some do not require any research in order to compete, so analyzing and accessing information may not be a significant factor. But all of the AECAs shared in this book teach many of these 21st-century skills.
Something Extra to Think About
If you need more evidence to convince you of the value of AECAs, consider the 2018 Future of Jobs Report (World Economic Forum, 2018). The top 10 job skills predicted for 2022 are:
- analytical thinking and innovation;
- active learning and learning strategies;
- creativity, originality, and initiative;
- technology design and programming;
- critical thinking and analysis;
- complex problem solving;
- leadership and social influence;
- emotional intelligence;
- reasoning, problem solving, and ideation; and
- systems analysis and evaluation.
Many of these align with the 21st-century skills discussed previously. The only one that does not match up with one of the survival skills is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is defined by Peter Salovey and John Mayer
the ability to monitor one's own and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, (as cited in Cherry, 2019, sec. 11, para. 6)
The key is the last part of the definition—the part that says people should use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior. If a student has all of the other 21st-century survival skills, they certainly use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior. This is what allows them to be successful in collaboration, drives their ability to show initiative, and provides them with the fortitude to adapt to challenging situations. In addition, emotional intelligence is used quite a bit in critical thinking, especially when it is authentic and can be applied to the real world, having to consider other people's perspectives as well. If we are able to teach students how to use these survival skills effectively, they will be attractive to employers and have a tool kit of skills that can be applied to their lives, rather than merely learning content that will not.
CHAPTER 2
English Language Arts
DOI: 10.4324/9781003234982-3
I start with English language arts (ELA) because more than any other subject area, it permeates through all of the others. Students will do a lot of reading in social studies, a lot of writing in science, and a lot of comprehension in math. Many ELA skills are ones that students will end up using the rest of their lives, no matter what profession they end up in. There may be a lot of school-specific math skills, social studies content, and science concepts that will fall by the wayside once leaving school, but ELA skills are something everyone uses every day.
With that in mind, the more we can do to strengthen these ELA skills or, more importantly, show students how to use them in an authentic situation, the better prepared they are going to be when they run across a situation that requires these skills in their real lives. The five AECAs in this chapter cover a lot of different skills, from writing, to reading, to vocabulary, to linguistics.
Scholastic Art & Writing Awards
What Is This Activity?
The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards (https://www.artandwriting.org), presented by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, a...
