California Career Resource Network (CalCRN)

What Administrators Say About The Real Game Series Transcript

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Dr. Barbara Nemko (Superintendent, Napa Valley Unified School District)
Knowing how important it is for students to make connections between what they're learning and what's happening in the real world, it's just always been something that I thought should be infused from kindergarten all the way through graduate school

Kathleen Daugherty (Principal, Redwood Middle School)
It has brought my parent community closer, my business community closer. We used to have to struggle to get presenters and now we get calls from people who say, "When is your career fair? I would really like to be a part of it"

Parents have a great time playing the games with kids.

They go to the fairs and they're loving the fact that, at middle school, the kids are asking them to be a part of it instead of saying "No, stay away"

We did it as a pilot for 5 weeks with one class...now, it's a requirement for my whole eighth grade curriculum. The kids have to go through it in order to be promoted and it's just real powerful

Danny Marquez (Director, Crossroads Employment Services)
We're seeing, I think, students being more excited about staying in school because of the real good linkage between what The Real Game tries to do in terms of helping career awareness and the importance of education. If you want to become a mechanical engineer, you can't drop out of high school. You won't get there. If you want to become a nutritionist, you have to finish school.

Panna Putnam (Middle School Coordinator, Yolo County Office of Education)
They are engaged, they are excited, they have these aha! situations, many times and, just the workshop we did last Wednesday, at the end of the workshop we asked their kids "What are the two things you learned today?" and one child, 8th grader who was getting only D's and F's, he said "You know, today I think I finally woke up" and that was incredible.

The way this game and the materials really help, I think, is to help the kids see what real life is going to be 5, 10, 15 years from now when they are, not actually in a school setting, learning, but hopefully, lifelong learners,

Bill Hughes (Administrator, Lemon Hill Career Center)
I see this as another tool that they can put in their tool box and say, "I remember this happening to me in class, now I'm more prepared to use it in my real life situation."

Because the businesses are seeing that we're trying to make a connection for them. We're building the kids that know how to cooperate, that know how to work together, that know how to collaborate. That know how to be independent and do their work

We like to use the materials because they are very user-friendly and we have trained teachers, after schoolteachers, parents, counselors, in this material so they can go into the communities and work with the kids. And, so it's accessible to a lot of kids and very easy to use in the classroom

I think it's important that we don't get so hung up on testing and accountability, which is where we are right now, that we stop making connections for students about what they're learning and why it's going to help them in their lives.

We are looking at what we have to do from a teaching point of view and that is make sure our kids do well on tests, but to kids, the tests are just something we impose on them.

What they're looking at is, what's going to happen when they grow up, why do they have to study, why do they have to take this class, why do they have to learn this?

And The Real Game helps them to understand that and then, they're going to end up doing what we want them to do, learning the standards to higher levels and that's the whole point of why we're in this business

I think it's the best investment in terms of career tools that are available to career counselors and administrators.

7/22/04 10:37 AM