A Remedy for Perfection
Introduction
Why mess with perfection? Fifty-five minutes of God-Awful Teaching in an Otherwise Awesome Science is followed by a five minute break in which students scramble to their next class. The next class is, by state mandate, I Honestly Couldn’t Care Less About History, But Since I Have to Take It, Could I At Least Not Have to Listen to Johnny Talk About Hooking Up With Jessica The Entire Time? After that class there’s a fifteen minute Break of Awesomeness where students can chat. Following the Break of Awesomeness is AP Novel Annotation And Excessive Homework Completion. This is followed by another scramble to another class; in this case the class is Le Français Qu’il Faut Que Je Prenne, Mais Ce N’est Pas Trop Mal: J’aime Bien Ma Prof. Need I continue? No one needs to be told that the Education System is riddled with issues, but every once in a while people need to be reminded that a remedy is possible; here I present a remedy for a few of the issues.
God-Awful Teaching in an Otherwise Awesome Science
Why is it that teachers can stay at a school, eat at a school, be paid by a school, get benefits from a school, and yet never really teach at one? All through sophomore year, students around me complained about a certain chemistry teacher who handed them the book without fully explaining the content and never really answered their questions, then expected them to know information that he’d never mentioned, or had them read, on tests. This teacher is still teaching and the only thing there is to say is, “Why?”
Teachers, unlike most workers, can’t be fired for failing to do their job. Teacher unions complain too much about it. So it doesn’t matter if said chemistry teacher fails to teach: he won’t get fired, he won’t lose his job, and he won’t lose benefits or have his pay reduced. The only thing that happens is that his students don’t learn the subject at all, or, as was the case in my year, everyone turns to A-Plus Student Who Learns By Psychic Diffusion (A-PSWLBPD) and asks her to teach them during lunch. This isn’t fair to A-PSWLBPD or any of her classmates. She shouldn’t have to play teacher and her fellow students shouldn’t have to frantically study chemistry every lunch period just to pass the class. Teachers should have to teach. Which means that teachers should be “fire-able.” But how?
Quite simply, begin with a Student Review Board (SRB). The SRB will, at the beginning of each school year, pass out anonymous review sheets to be filled out by students about teachers they had the year before. Most likely this event would have to be between a half-day and a full-day long, to ensure that students have time to fully think through and complete reviews. Waiting until this time will do two things: remove the teachers’ ability to punish students who give them bad reviews—though I believe reviews should be anonymous—by say, failing them for it, and allow the students some time for hindsight. The teacher who was a terrible ogre during the time a student had him might very well have taught him something useful that the student wouldn’t have noticed while still angry about what was going on in the class.
A review sheet would look roughly like this:
Teacher:___________
Subject: ___________
Teaching Methods:____/100
(Please evaluate homework policy, lecture style, visuals, demonstrations, and any other information or practice relevant to the teacher’s methods of conveying information to students and encouraging learning.)
Explain:
Suggestions:
Fairness:____/100
(Please evaluate grading policies and testing standards, such as the type of information conveyed by the teacher versus the information you were tested on.)
Explain:
Suggestions:
Disposition: ____/100
(Please evaluate how approachable and easy to deal with the teacher is. Are you comfortable talking to your teacher about scholastic issues? Personal issues?)
Explain:
Suggestions:
Each category would be “graded” on a scale of one to one hundred on the line next to the title, with decimals being permitted to the tenths place. “Explain” invites students to tell why the teacher is receiving a certain grade, and “Suggestions” would ask students for how they would have had the teacher do something differently in order to obtain a higher grade. When the surveys are complete, the SRB would collect them and begin the evaluation process.
To start, the SRB would sort all survey reviews by teacher then by subject, as some teachers teach more than one subject. Surveys the SRB finds unfair—such as one student who rates the teacher “1.0” across the board with no explanation when most reviews are rating the same teacher between “65.3” and “92.4”—will be removed before the average score is calculated. To pass the review, the teacher must have a “70.0” or higher average score in each of the three grading categories. (This is equivalent to a C- for students, which is the lowest passing grade in a high school course.) Once the scores are calculated, reports will be issued to the teachers. All reports will be marked with a circle in the color of the report’s title on the top right-hand corner, and all reports will contain a summary of student comments and suggestions.
Green Report (Green)
This will be issued to teachers scoring between a 70.0 and a 97.9 in all categories. The teacher is not required to change anything, but is encouraged to consider student comments and suggestions.
Yellow Warning Report (Yellow)
This will be issued to teachers with a score of 69.9 or lower in one or more categories for the first time. This report will include which score(s) are below 70.0 and what the score is, as well as what score the teacher should be aiming to receive the following year. The teacher is required to raise a score of 65.0 or higher to at least 70.0, and a score of 64.9 or lower by 5.0 or more—for example, turning a 49.7 into a 54.7, or a 50.2 into a 57.1—by the following year’s review.
Blue Warning Report (Blue)
This report will be issued to any teacher who received any color Warning the year before and managed to raise the score by the necessary amount, but remains under the 70.0 passing grade; for example, a teacher who received a 45.7 on a Yellow but whose score is now 63.2. These teachers are required to raise their score to 70.0 or higher, or by 4.5. The teacher’s current and goal scores will be included in this report. Also, a Blue may be issued to a teacher whose raise is extremely close to the goal; for example, a teacher who was issued a Yellow for a 65.0 whose score rose to 69.9. This decision would be based on the student explanations, and the circumstances would be noted on the report with the scores.
Orange Warning Report (Orange)
Any teacher who received a Yellow or a Blue the previous year and failed to raise their review scores by the necessary amount will be issued an Orange. This report will also contain the teacher’s scores and carries a requirement of raising the score: 65.5 or higher must become a 70.0, and 64.4 or lower must be raised by 5.5 or more by the next review.
Red Warning Report (Red)
Teachers who received an Orange the prior year and failed to meet the requirements on that issuance will be issued a Red. A Red requires that all scores be brought up to 70.0. Failure to comply will result in dismissal of the teacher.
Purple Congratulatory Report (Purple)
Teachers who receive scores of 98.0 or higher on their report and no scores under 70.0 are issued a Purple. Purples come in five levels. Purples are marked with both a purple circle and a star of the title description at the top right-hand corner of the report. The Purples are not cumulative—a teacher earning a Purple-3 will not also get the benefits of Purple-1 and Purple-2 added onto the benefits of Purple-3.
Bronze-Star (Purple-1): The teacher received one score of 98.0 or higher and will receive a 3000.00 dollar bonus on his or her paycheck for the year.
Silver-Star (Purple-2): The teacher received a 98.0 or higher in two areas, and will receive a 4000.00 dollar bonus on his or her paycheck for that year.
Gold-Star (Purple-3): The teacher received all scores between 98.0 and 100.0, and will receive a bonus of 5000.00 dollars.
Double-Star (Purple-4): The teacher received all scores between 98.5 and 100.0, and will receive a bonus of 7500.00 dollars.
Triple-Star (Purple-5): The teacher received all scores between 99.5 and 100.0, and will receive a bonus of 10,000.00 dollars.
Allowing teachers to be punished or rewarded will give them the necessary push to improve their teaching styles. Making the decision based on student reviews allows for the teachers to learn what students think about how they teach and what would make their class more valuable and educational to future students. All of this adds up to one thing: No more terrible teachers in what would otherwise be a really cool class.
I Honestly Couldn’t Care Less About History, But Since I Have to Take It, Could I At Least Not Have to Listen to Johnny Talk About Hooking Up With Jessica The Entire Time?
What happens when a kid with an AP-level brain but no interest in the particular subject takes a regular course? What happens when a kid who loves the subject but isn’t quite AP-track gets stuck in a regular course? Hint: the answer is the same. Both students will find themselves as a peculiar minority: kids that actually want to learn, but don’t want to or can’t take the AP/Honors course. Why isn’t there a class for that? Why isn’t there a class that isn’t any harder than a regular course, but only takes students who truly want to focus on learning the course material? Such a class could be extremely beneficial to both the disinterested AP-track student and the interested non-AP-track student.
The AP-track student would find herself in a class with few meaningless distractions, such as Johnny whispering to Mike about what he did to Jessica and Sarah and Leslie all through the period in a voice just a little too quiet for the teacher to notice, but not quiet enough to escape the other students’ ears. So the AP-track student would be able to focus on the material, as such students tend to like to do, without having to take on the extra course-load of a full-on AP or Honors course. Ability to focus increases ability to learn, and the goal here is, of course, to get students to learn.
The Non-AP-track student who just likes the subject would perhaps benefit even more. Not only would she be able to focus more effectively on the subject that she likes so much, but she would also be among AP-track students. This would expose her to AP-style study skills and learning methods brought in by the AP-track students, which could significantly increase her own ability to study and learn the material. Also, exposure to AP-level thinking could expand her thought processes much more than being in a regular class. Overall, this type of class would be quite valuable to her.
A class whose roster is based on motivation to learn a subject would be quite an asset to any student who took it. Signing up for the class would be no different than signing up for any other course; it would just be another designation on the sign-up sheets, like “AP” or “Honors” or “Advanced.”
The Break Of Awesomeness
A typical day in high school runs from seven- or eight-thirty in the morning to three-ten in the afternoon where I live. And trust me, the days are quite typical. Six or seven classes a day, depending on whether or not you’re willing to get up for an extra period in the morning every day, each with a five minute break in between, an extra ten minutes between periods two and three, and thirty-five minutes to eat lunch between periods four and five. It’s not exciting. It’s not dynamic. It’s also not the optimal arrangement.
Here is the proposition:
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Time
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Schedule 1 (M, W)
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Schedule 2 (T, Th)
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Time
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Schedule 3 (F)
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9:00-10:30
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Period 1
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Period 4
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8:00-9:00
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Teacher Meet
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10:35-10:45
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Break
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Break
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9:00-9:45
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Period 1
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10:50-12:20
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Period 2
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Period 5
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9:50-10:35
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Period 2
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12:20-12:55
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Lunch
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Lunch
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10:40-10:50
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Break
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1:00-2:30
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Period 3
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Period 6
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10:55-11:40
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Period 3
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2:35-2:45
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Break
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Break
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11:45-12:30
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Period 4
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2:50-4:20
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Period A/B
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Period A/B
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12:30-1:20
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Lunch
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|
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1:25-2:00
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Period 5
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|
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2:05-2:50
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Period 6
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|
|
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2:55-3:05
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Break
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|
|
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3:10-4:00
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Period A/B
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Let’s begin with the start time: Why 9:00? That seems a bit late, doesn’t it? Actually no. You see, high-school-age teenagers are wired a little differently than most people seem to think. Older teenagers (14-19) require between 8 and 9.5 hours of sleep, with something around 9.25 hours being the average optimum. Now, guess what time most teenagers go to bed? I’ll give you a hint: It’s not 9:00 pm, which would make a 6:00 o’clock wake-up and a 7:30 school start-time okay. In fact, older teenagers just don’t produce melatonin—the brain’s sleep-inducing chemical—until around 10:30 pm. So most really aren’t falling asleep until 11:00, or midnight. Now, sleep deprivation is among the worst things that can happen to a student’s learning capacity. Lacking sleep, focus goes out the window, old memory takes longer to activate, and new memory doesn’t get laid down well. Students fall asleep in class instead of at home, and end up missing notes. Or worse, as their immune system shuts down from all the missing sleep hours, they get sick and don’t come to school at all. And after this long week of not having enough sleep and not doing as well as possible, they go home and sleep on the weekends. They’re just getting caught up right? Yes and no. While they are, in fact, catching up on all the missing REM sleep, they’re also sleeping later into the morning. Which means they go to bed later at night. And when Sunday night rolls around: voila! The student can’t sleep until one in the morning, and on Monday, the cycle starts again. Hence, start school at 9:00, and skip this whole zombie parade.
Next, why a block schedule for four days and a regular schedule for one? As counterintuitive as it seems, to make things simpler. If every day was a block day, then to keep the amount of time in each class consistent, each week would have a different schedule. Kids who forget which schedule they’re on might come in on Monday and go to the wrong class, making them late to their real class. Or perhaps, a teacher would prepare a lecture for the wrong group of students. It’s much easier if one day a week has all the classes, and since Friday is the most wonderful weekday of all, clearly, the special day must fall on Friday.
Now, why a block schedule at all? ADD kids couldn’t possibly sit through an hour-and-a-half-long class. Some non-ADD kids couldn’t do that. I disagree.
The fault here belongs not to the ADD or ADHD brain, but to the teacher who fails to take it into account. Simply starting a game of catch with an ADD-affected person can focus them quite effectively on whatever discussion the class is having, or lecture the teacher is giving. The real problem is that most teachers simply won’t play catch with Jimmy, or allow Bobby to do it in their place, even if that’s all he really needs. The bottom line is that the length of the class is not a detriment, but a gift: that much time allows for increased variety in teaching methods, more supervised instruction time, and more in-depth in-class assignments.
Imagine a class that spends twenty minutes listening to a teacher explain a subject, then breaks into small groups and does some work on what was just explained. The students converse on the topic. Help explain it to each other where perhaps the teacher was unclear. All the while the teacher walks around through the students and checks on their work, offering help whenever necessary. Twenty minutes later, the teacher calls the class to order again and they all go over the work they just did for the next twenty minutes. The teacher gives a small but in-depth assignment to be due the next time class meets, and allows students to work on it for the final half-hour of class. Again, the teacher walks around and helps students who want it, checks work when asked, gives notes and suggestions about certain problems—anything that would help. Trying to maintain this kind of schedule on a short day just wouldn’t work; there isn’t time.
Also, think of what kind of activities a teacher can orchestrate, in-class, in a period that’s only fifty minutes long. Half the period would probably be spent explaining the activity, which leaves just twenty-five minutes for the activity itself. Given a longer period of time in which to do an activity, a teacher can make the activity more engaging and interesting. In sophomore year, my history teacher decided to show us the causes of World War I through a game. The class was divided into groups of about 5 people, and each group was given a roughly equivalent number of desks, and a stack of paper. In the center, there was a rather sizeable assortment of other desks. Paper could be traded for markers, and any group with markers could attack another group and take their desks—provided the attacking group had more markers. Any amount of groups could form an alliance, and pool their desks, paper, and markers. The point of the game was to have the most desks—preferably all of them—by the end of the period. The only problem was that due to the game’s natural length, it had to be explained the day before. That was plenty of time for a lot of people to forget the rules and objectives. Playing with only a general recollection of about half the rules makes for difficult game-play. Had my teacher been able to explain it and play it in the same day, not only would the class have remembered it more effectively, but the game could have been a surprise, and who doesn’t love being surprised with a game instead of work?
As for the teachers concerned about students only having a class every other day, instead of every day, I have a comment or two. First, what schedule do college students have? Essentially an irregular block schedule, and they’re doing just fine. Second, struggling students would, because of Period A/B, have more time to work on their studies under the supervision of people who understand the subject. This would allow for daily practice, if necessary.
Now, perhaps you’re looking at that bizarre little “Period A/B” thing up there in the table. What’s up with that? A number of wonderful things. “Period A” already exists: it’s that period traditionally before Period 1 where motivated students can take an extra class. But what’s “Period B?”
Period B would have a number of uses, both scholastic and otherwise. The first would be for independent study courses. Personally, I’m good with languages. I could easily take three of them at once, and at a much faster pace than a regular language course runs. So, rather than spending three of my normal classes on languages where I don’t need much help or work to understand the material, I would just check in with the three teachers say, once a week to speak a little and take the tests for the course. My friend who’s brilliant in math could take AP Calculus in this period, leaving more structured periods open for her love of music: she plays the alto saxophone and the flute, and is the drum major in the school marching band. Classes taken in Period B would be run by student-teacher contract; a student would write up what they would intend to do to learn the material and how often they’ll come check in with the teacher, and then the teacher will edit it, if necessary, to ensure the student’s grade in the course would be a fair measurement of how much the student knows. If both parties agree to the contract, they sign it and begin the course.
The second use of Period B courses would be to reduce the number of students in summer school. Any student who failed a course or wishes they had gotten a better grade in a course—a student who obtained a C but now needs an A for their target GPA, for example—could use the contract process described above to retake the class.
The third use for Period B would be academic aid: the school could dedicate the library or a multi-purpose room of some sort to becoming a peer-tutoring center. Students with good grades get to put on their college applications that they tutored for such-and-such a time, and students with lower grades get the help they need. Students are often more willing to ask questions of other students than they are to ask questions of teachers, and sometimes a teacher’s explanation just won’t connect with a student the way another student’s will, which is why I mainly suggest peer tutoring. Teachers, however, would also be available during this time for students who would like to discuss subjects with teachers.
The fourth use of Period B would be various enrichment activities, such as clubs or intra-school competitions. For example, students could borrow a teacher’s room once a week for a club meeting. Perhaps the school would allow students to be supervised in an open Quad or on the football field to have some sort of competition: “Design a catapult using only pool noodles and springs,” or “Solve world hunger; fastest-acting, longest-lasting solution wins.” Schools could also hold assemblies in this time, or bring in guest speakers from colleges or professions that might be of interest to the students.
The fifth use would be student-directed classes. As in, students design “courses” not offered by the school, such as a six-week course in making sushi run by a culinary-inclined student and the Japanese exchange student staying with her for the semester. Mostly this would just be for fun, which, I suspect teachers become less aware of this as I get older, is actually good for students every once in a while. Fun creates happiness; happiness relieves stress. Stress-free students have an easier time learning more information, and retain this information a longer period of time. However, being “for fun” doesn’t make the class a waste of time. Students who wish to become professional chefs may find a class on sushi to be one of the most important classes they take in high school.
AP Annotation and Excessive Homework Completion
Shall I tell you the story of Jimmy the Samurai Cupcake? It was ten pages long, so perhaps I should save it for another date. However, it might be of interest to note that I wrote that story in the margins of a book I was supposed to be annotating for AP English Language. And that I got a perfect score on the assignment. Apparently my teacher was so blinded by my use of colored pencils—she required us to identify more themes and literary devices than I had highlighters or light-colored markers for—that she forgot to read what I wrote. Or perhaps the grading standard was based on the degree to which the margins were coated in ink? Unfortunately, people around me who spent multiple sleepless nights in a row actually annotating the whole book deeply and to the best of their ability pulled off B’s. Depth of thought and effort were clearly second to making the book illegible beneath “annotation.” Now, I can’t remember half of what I highlighted in any of the books I read that year. I don’t remember the majority of the plot lines for these books. I don’t remember what we were supposed to have found. The one book that I “faked” by just reading it through, then going back and randomly adding commentary to the margins and colors to the words, is perhaps the only book I remember very well. Annotating 10 pages to the teacher’s standards of fullness required at least an hour. Most books were at least 300 pages long, usually 400 or so, and a book was due about every month. Every student who took that class lost days’ worth of sleep to the effort. By the end of the year, I had done so much writing that I was crying as I took my finals because my hand hurt so badly. What was the point?
Never found one.
So why did we do all this work?
To get a good grade.
Did anyone try to talk to the teacher about it?
Yeah…She refused to change her policies.
This is excessive. This is unfair to students. This is, ultimately, a ridiculous and arbitrary waste of time. Teachers need to be educated on what homework to assign and how much of it to give. Annotating a book should not take ten times longer than reading the book. Math homework should not take longer than a class period to complete every night. Language classes should not require that you spend an hour drawing a hamburger just so you can take twenty seconds to label the parts in Spanish.
First, teachers need to understand how long their assignments are for students, and how much students are actually getting from these assignments. Mostly, this would be addressed by the SRB I mentioned before. I’ll add a new function here: the SRB would also take complaints throughout the year about teacher’s policies or behavior. The SRB would present the complaint to the teacher, allowing students to avoid being punished for speaking up, which often stops students from bringing issues to their teachers.
Second, teachers in most classes should institute levels of homework. One night’s assignment in Geometry, for example, might be page 126, problems 2-17. However, for students who feel that they don’t understand some aspect of the material very well, problems 18-21 deal with Topic A and would be a good idea to try, problems 22-26 deal with Topic B and would be helpful if that’s your issue, and 27-32 are about Topic C and would help if that’s where the problem is. Allowing students to add onto the basic assignment as they feel it necessary allows the students to have an individualized study program without causing the teacher much extra work. Students who understand Chapter 3 quickly can do very little work in Chapter 3, and if they hit some trouble in understanding Chapter 5, they can kick up the studying a bit with the extra, non-obligatory work. However, some students might not follow this pattern of self-regulation. For students who complete the minimal assignment but still receive a grade lower than a C- on tests, a teacher would have the ability to mandate the extra problems if he or she felt it was necessary or beneficial for the student.
Le Français Qu’il Faut Que Je Prenne, Mais Ce N’est Pas Trop Mal; J’aime Bien Ma Prof
Some students connect with the way one teacher teaches, and not with the way another does. Some students like for the teacher to take questions as they arise, some prefer to see the topic all the way through, then have the teacher answer any remaining questions. Students differ, teachers differ, and this difference needs to match up for effective learning to occur.
Also, a teacher can make or break a subject. A teacher a student doesn’t connect with can ruin a subject, and a teacher a student really loves can make a subject great. For me, that second category was exemplified by my French teacher freshman year (and subsequently sophomore, and now senior year). She was delighted to translate the bizarre things my friends and I wanted to be able to say, such as, “I’m secretly a squirrel, and I’m going to take over the world!” or “I’m now an airplane. I’m going to fly in random circles around the room, and you can’t stop me!” Even an entire speech, which I won’t relate here for time’s sake, was happily translated for us during lunch. At least partially as a result of that experience, I’ve come to absolutely love the French language. Yet, schools won’t allow students to change classes based on teachers.
A teacher is just as important to how well a student learns a subject as what textbook the class uses is, but schools can’t standardize teachers. Nor should they try. Teachers are a wonderful variable, but students need to have access to the variable that will give them the best result. Class sizes aren’t necessarily as important as having a variety of teachers, and therefore a variety of teaching styles, to choose from, allowing the students to be matched to the environment in which they will succeed the best. The proposition: when students are signing up for classes, they should also take an assessment of what teaching style best suits their learning style. When their schedule is being designed, the teacher that is the best fit for them should also be taken into account, and every effort should be made to keep that student with a suitable teacher. (In case the question of how the teachers are assessed pops into mind, that’s another use for the reviews collected by the SRB; part of the review is based on the teacher’s teaching methods, so there’s already a record from the beginning of the year detailing the teacher’s style.)
Conclusion
These are my observations and ideas about the modern education system. Obviously, there are a few drawbacks. Given the recent cuts to school funding, a lot of these ideas may be extremely difficult to put into practice. However, were these things possible, I believe they would solve the majority of problems in modern schools.