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The book lying on the desk of Valley Park teacher Jean McGinnis had a funny title, "I Must Have Money Because I Still Have Checks Left."

But, for McGinnis' students, the title has practical consequences. In this information age, students need knowledge they can use on an everyday basis, McGinnis said. So schools are teaching students how to write checks, how to hold a baby's head and how to fill out job applications - in addition to reading, writing and arithmetic.

And what students can't find in their textbooks, they can read it in new books such as Rebecca Knight's "A Car, Some Cash and A Place to Crash: The Only Post-College Survival Guide You'll Ever Need" ($17.95, Rodale, 334 pages) or "life after school. explained." (168 pages, $12.95, Cap & Compass).

We've come a long way, baby, since our high school home economics and shop classes, where we learned how to sew from Simplicity patterns, bake cupcakes and build bookshelves.

"Our focus has changed," McGinnis said.

Besides, parental guidance carried us only so far. Some things we learned on our own.

Valley Park High School junior Marcella MacDermott is ambitious, bright and athletic. She wants to design houses one day.

In the meantime, she's working her way up the ladder. She's enrolled in industrial technology classes (what used to be called "shop") at Valley Park, worked at a tanning salon last year and was recently hired at a clothing store. None of her textbooks told her that she needed to file a tax return this year. She got help.

Said MacDermott, 17: "I'm probably going to do that on my own eventually."

Ashley DeClue, a Valley Park senior, recalled her first paycheck and the alphabet soup of deductions on it, especially one labeled "FICA." DeClue wanted to know where her money was going.

When it comes to table manners, DeClue remembers which fork to use first because of a scene from the movie "Pretty Woman."

"You start from the outside and work in," she said.

Another junior, Andrew Byrne, is thinking about a career in the health field. Byrne doesn't get the fuss about the fork. One fork suits him just fine. He's not oblivious to manners though. At dinner, his mother reminds him to put his napkin in his lap, Byrne said.

For those seeking knowledge, there's plenty out there to soften entry into the School of Hard Knocks. As Knight wrote in her book, "there's no need to do things the hard way."

The book on growing up

Jesse Vickey, 28, remembers budding adulthood. A gap existed, Vickey said, between what he learned from teachers and parents and what knowledge he needed to operate in the real world. That's partly what prompted him a couple of years ago to write "life after school. explained." The book is geared to college students but the information may come in handy to younger adults too.

"It's something I experienced firsthand," said Vickey, a Duke University grad. "Culturally, you're expected to learn these things through trial and error."

He added, "It can be a frustrating process. It's an awkward thing. It seems like a lot of people know the information."

And, if we don't know, we're too embarrassed to ask.

The 2003 edition of "life after school" is filled with practical knowledge. Much of the book is dedicated to etiquette at a business dinner. Among the tips:

Remember that a business dinner has an agenda and is "not a pie-eating contest."

You've worn too much lipstick if you leave "lips on the glass."

The book covers subjects as varied as HMOs to making conversation to cuts of steak to ordering red wine or white at dinner. Always follow the host's lead at dinner.

"If Simon orders dessert, you can order dessert," the book said. "... If Simon wants to hang out and chat about Motown music, you make sure that you can't say enough about Stevie Wonder."

Vickey's book grew out of seminars he and contributing author and "comic-in-residence" Andy Ferguson developed three years ago. The company conducts about 60 seminars annually, many of them at colleges.

Besides the book, Cap and Compass produces online "Starter Kits" for folks moving to specific cities. For instance, the St. Louis kit contains this overview: "This city is decidedly Midwestern in its makeup and values. They love their sports teams, their Anheuser-Busch beverage products, and their riverboat gambling." There's also information on setting up utilities and cable and forms for voter registration and state income tax.

A measuring spoon of the real world

Schools haven't gotten away from the basics, but they've incorporated some practical, day-to-day life skills into the mix, educators said.

Bill Porzukowiak is assistant superintendent of curriculum for Belleville School District No. 118, which includes about 3,800 students in junior high and elementary schools. About five years ago, the district added computer skills to its "fine/practical arts" requirement for eighth grade. For several years, they've taught students such day-to-day skills as check-writing, budgeting and comparative price shopping, he added.

"We felt that technology was something the kids had to be exposed to, so they could better compete and use the resources on the Internet," Porzukowiak said.

The assistant superintendent was concerned that those lessons might be at risk as pressure mounts on schools to hike math and reading scores, under President George W. Bush's education reform legislation known as the "No Child Left Behind Act."

"We can't do it all," Porzukowiak said.

Ruth Litman-Block, distance learning coordinator for the Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis, said "learning doesn't take place just within the four walls of a class. It takes place anywhere the students are." Distance learning involves connecting local students, through video conferencing and Web-based classes, with teachers, experts or other students at remote locations.

That technology connected students to a seminar on tax preparation by the Internal Revenue Service and a stock market project by University of Missouri at St. Louis economics professor Barbara Flowers.

"I wish somebody had taught me about credit cards and stuff when I was younger," Litman-Block said. "I had to figure it out myself."

At Valley Park, that old "shop" smell of fresh sawdust still hangs in the air. And freshmen, such as Philip Stuart, can still learn how to "sweat" copper pipes and make birdhouses.

Some things don't change, industrial technology teacher Kevin Anders said.

"The class teaches you how to do things with your hands," Stuart, 14, said.

In McGinnis' classes, they're still sewing and cooking - just with high-speed sewing machines and mixers and not as often.

Anders and McGinnis remember a time when there were very few students of the opposite sex in their classes and even fewer computers. Nowadays, it's not unusual to see girls taking shop and boys home ec.

In Industrial Tech, the shop area adjoins a computer lab where students get a taste of flight training, robotics or animation at about a dozen computer monitors. In Family and Consumer Services, they use computers to research potential illnesses and injuries to children. They study interior design but also child development.

In McGinnis' class, they're not using an egg or five-pound sack of flour to simulate motherhood. There's a life-like computerized baby, programmed to cry at least a couple times in the middle of the night and to record how many times students let their heads snap back.

"I know pretty much it's going to be hard," said freshman Jessica Yount who was about to take her baby home.

The previous weekend freshman Shayna Whitaker took hers home. Afterward, Whitaker decided she wasn't ready for motherhood yet. "It's a lot of work," she said.

Both teachers said the classes are designed to give students a dose of real world experiences so that they can apply what they learned to real life.

Said McGinnis: "The world that the students are graduating into now has changed. I think it's imperative that students acquire the ability to evaluate practical problems and take actions for their families and themselves."
 

 
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