I created this blog several days ago and have been struggling to come up with my first post mainly because my thoughts are random. I even considered creating a different post just for random thoughts until I read some suggestions on creating a blog. The best suggestion I read was to determine a title or theme and to stick with it.

I chose College and Career Ready as the title for this blog because I feel that my day-to-day duties fit this ideal even though it is a bit cliché and part of the political/educational mantra that I am a bit antagonistic towards but, hey, sometimes you have to play with the hand that you're dealt. Now, I feel it is my purpose to detach College and Career Ready from what is or what has become cliché and to give it some personal thought and feeling.

First, I would define College and Career Ready just simply as life ready. From this point of view I would tell students to learn to make a living, not an 'A'. To be ready in this way, a student must have some career goals in mind in order to understand what skills and academic abilities are necessary. This takes good guidance counseling, good parenting, good awareness on the part of all interested parties, which include building principles and all instructors.

College and Career Ready curriculum begins with every principal and teacher having a simple profile of each student and this profile would be a mental picture of that student, within the minds of the adults that shape his or her future, as that graduate, employee, entrepreneur, self – directed individual that the student wants to be. If we share the same vision as our students, we know how to help them achieve. All academic achievement will be founded upon this vision. Creating the type of school community that would fit this synergistic profile would solve so many other problems too.