On Thursday, May 8th, I’ve been asked to talk to the thousand or so students at Columbus School West in Cicero, Illinois, on the value of a writing career for their annual Explore More Day—an initiative to give students the opportunity to explore more about different careers in their community and surrounding neighborhoods. So what will I talk about?
One of the strong items that I plan to stress is the value that, along with writing, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) will have in the future. The students of Cicero have average family incomes of less than $41,000, meaning they’re about 30% lower than the national average of $61,500. In turn, this means that most will have a hard time finding the financial support to go to college. And that means that STEM will have an even greater importance for these students than for those in areas with higher family incomes—they’ll have to work that much harder to find the funding to get into college.
The other item that I’ll focus on is the basic ability to write. Knowing a STEM topic without the ability to communicate well is a job only half done. Those students who find their way into STEM areas will have to be able to communicate with their peers to be successful. Knowing how to communicate will likely have more importance to these students because they can take that knowledge and go into some other career than just STEM. It may not pay as well, but it will be more attainable. Knowing proper grammar is more important than algebra or biology in this situation.
It will be a learning experience for me as well to see how well I can communicate the value of STEM and communications to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. It’s been a while since my own children were that age and I’m sure it will be different than my normal job. I’ll find out real fast how good a communicator I really am to my first group of students. I’ll probably just get it right when I’m talking to the last group of students. One of the things that I know I won’t do is use all the acronyms that you and I use everyday in our work. I really won’t have time to explain them all.
