FHMS

For those of you with two hours to kill, put a pot of coffee on to percolate, prop toothpicks in your eyelids and spend time listening to the webinar, "Teaching Unprepared Students: Strategies for Promoting Success and Retention in Higher Education," by Kathleen F. Gabriel, Ed. D. The webinar covers topics related to engaging at-risk students. To me, the best part of the seminar was the statement that there are no quick fixes or magical solutions -- for example, when you have a student with low reading skills (3rd to 6th grade level, or thereabouts), make the student realize that it will take 2-3 dedicated years of catchup (too bad it's not ketchup) to meet the demands of typical higher education training techniques.

I could go on about the other details of the doctor's dilettantish dissertation but I won't. Suffice it to say she covered the topics well, if perhaps a bit boringly (i.e., not following her own advice to keep the audience engaged). She suggested a teacher/coach encourage a high level of teacher-student contact and networking between the students themselves (using social networking tools like myspace and facebook, or old-fashioned methods like IMing and emailing).

Here are some of the individuals and reading material that should help any of you who struggle with reaching out to those for whom education is a chore, bore and full of worthless ancient lore:

• August Wilson - high school dropout and Pulitzer Prize winner
• Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Mind, by Richard J. Light
• The Art of Changing The Brain, by
• How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, by
• Applying the science of learning, by Halpern and Hakel, Change magazine (2003)
• Use Both Sides of Your Brain, by Tony Buzan
• Learn the Lingo, by Kathleen F. Gabriel
• The Teaching Professor, by E. Hester
• Classroom assessment techniques, by T.A. Angelo and K.P. Cross
• John Wooden - "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail."
• I Dream A World, by Brian Lanker
• TEACHING UNPREPARED STUDENTS: Strategies for Promoting Success and Retention in Higher Education, by Kathleen F. Gabriel

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What does FHMS mean? Fort Henry Mall Syndrome, a phrase coined by a primary schoolmate, indicating the useless information exchange that takes places primarily in commercial shopping districts and involves conversations about items that are nonessential to life. Often accompanied by "valley talk" or other dialects devoted to crass commercialism. Heavily promoted to the masses to encourage wasteful spending.

In the current economy, we face a crisis of identity. How many of us have been bred and raised solely to live as pure examples of masochistic sufferers of FHMS? How many FHMS sufferers no longer have a means to temporarily ease their pain using retail therapy because they're afraid to spend the money they have, or have no money or credit to use at all?

If you're willing to go through a fun but confusing retraining process, then my classes at ITT Tech will show you how to overcome FHMS. I don't promise that, by the end of one of my classes, you will be free of FHMS. Instead, I will show you how to put others' FHMS inclinations to your use. You help them feel better and feed your family at the same time.

Despite accusations from my esteemed colleagues, I'm not here to condemn FHMS. No, I understand that FHMS is integral to the way our economy works. However, I want to show those willing to open their eyes to new ways of living that FHMS is like a river that you can tap, dam, divert or otherwise consider your personal source of energy. You can live a happy life without immersing yourself in those waters. See yourself sitting on the shore of FHMS with your favorite drink in one hand and your favorite person in the other, both of you watching the rush of people flowing past you in their innocent ride down the mighty FHMS. Go ahead and wave at each other because all of you are enjoying life the way you know it.