EDUCATION NOTES
Teaching kids real-world skills

Bill Slingerland teachers math, science and social studies at Port Aransas High School.

This month, I will go with my aquatic science students on the third field trip for our annual coastal erosion study. This is has been an on-going grant from the Bureau of Economic Geology in Austin. This is the eighth year for this study.

This series of field trips enables the students to take measures and make observations of beach conditions through different times of the year. The study looks at changes in topography, dune size and beach width over the year. The students also look at weather, wind and currents.

Port Aransas is one of five high schools along the Texas coast taking such measurements at their local beaches. This is a real-world situation where science, politics, and land issues all meet.

The vegetation line determines where the beach is and where construction may occur. Beaches such as Galveston have seen drastic changes after hurricanes. Many of the students are of voting age now, and the beach development issue is one that impacts them today.

The data collected by the aquatic science students is graphed and displayed on the Internet. This project gets students involved in real-world situations.

At Port Aransas High School, there are other classes that get students involved in skills that deal with realworld situations. The career education teacher, Monica Sonnier, took several students to San Antonio to learn about the business end of running a professional basketball team, and then they saw a San Antonio Spurs basketball game. All of the computer-centered classes teach skills in Web pages, research and presentations.

The service learning class made pottery bowls and conducted a soup dinner to raise money for the Port Aransas Food Bank. The building trades classes and the service learning classes are building a bench and landscaping a garden area by the shop area. Claudia Locher teaches sewing, and students learn to design and create pillows, quilts and bags. All of these real-world situations teach students skills that they can use later in life.

I sometimes envision a class that could teach about food, science and cooking. Home economics class had its place in the curriculum of days gone by. Being in a service industry based town, cooking skills would be useful in the work place and at home. The Port Aransas Education Foundation is always looking for projects that would involve and engage students. Local restaurants could hire students who were enrolled in a food science class.

Knowledge about food encompasses geography, science, math and health. Careers in cooking can be continued at Del Mar College or at cooking institutes in San Antonio, Austin or Houston. School is more than just reading, writing and arithmetic. It also involves skills that can lead to a successful life in a great, big world.