Fire+Chief+Struble+email+Chris

FINAL QUESTIONS FOR STRUBLE

Dear Fire Chief Struble,

We would like to invite you to be on our Lunch Time Leaders Podcast that we do as part of our Social Studies class at Moran Middle School in Wallingford, CT. We interview leaders in our community and beyond to talk about the challenges of being successfully prepared for the 21st Century. I am friends with your son Matt and I know you a little, but I would like to find out what your kind of work entails such as saving someone who is trapped in a fire. What drives you to do what you do and what skills you need to be sucessful in this working environment. We would like to do the interview on December 17, 2008 at Time(t/w/th11:00am. The interviews are usually approximately 15 minutes long. The interview would require us to have us call you on your phone in order for our system to record it, do it with Skype if you have that capability. You can view our website and see examples of our other interviews on our podcast website, [|http://lunchtimeleaders.podomatic.com] or http://lunchtimeleaders.wikispaces.com . A list of the questions that would be asked are below. We look forward to hearing from you,

Chris Wilner,

The list of questions can be found here


 * 1) What skills/abilities do you feel students need to have to be successful in the 21st century as a firefighter?
 * 2) What skills/abilities do students need to have to be successful citizens in a globaly connected world?
 * 3) Looking at the people you currently see entering the workforce of a firefighter, what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses?
 * 4) There is a lot of discussion in K-12 education about the importance of content knowledge (knowing a lot of “stuff” about math, science, social studies, language arts, etc.) versus the importance of learning skills and students being able to construct their own understanding of material/ideas that are new to them (being able to “learn how to learn”). What are your thoughts regarding how much we should focus on content knowledge versus focusing on students’ ability to learn/adapt/grow?
 * 5) There is also a lot of discussion in education on the tension between being successful as an individual and being successful as part of a group or team. We’d like to hear more about your thoughts regarding this.
 * 6) Tell us a little bit about any changes you foresee for the workplace (in your field) in the next 5-15 years (and beyond). What do you think this means for students currently in high school and for K-12 education in general?
 * 7) What types of technologies should our students be proficient at using?
 * 8) What was the best learning/educational experience you have had? Why?
 * 9) If you were going to design a 21st century school from the ground up, what are three key features you would include? These features could be physical (building features), pedagogical (teaching techniques/approach), structural (curriculum, schedule, etc.), technological (specific tools/software/experiences), etc.
 * 10) When we're done today, what's the one most important "take-away" message you'd like our teachers and students to hear?