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Opinion
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Written by Palistha Shakya
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Wednesday, 10 March 2010 |
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Melinda Johnson’s* head was down and the boys sitting next to her were bored. With nothing else to do, they began putting things in her hair, lightly of course, so she wouldn’t know what was happening. Things got even more out of control when the whole class took notice of what was happening. That is, everyone except the girl and the teacher. Camera phones went off and laughter ensued.
Bullying starts in elementary school, increases in middle school, and continues through high school and yet it remains an under-reported issue at Grant. This is disconcerting because according to statistics drawn from “Bullies and Victims in Schools” by Valerie E. Besag, 15 percent of high school students have experienced one to three incidents of bullying in the last month and “46 percent of those children will suffer poor grades or will abstain from extra curriculur activities because of [this] bullying.” To top this off, bullying in high school is more cruel and callous than in elementary or middle school.
Grant High School counselor Jean Berg defines bullying as “disrespecting someone...it’s a way of doing a mean act or saying mean things, whether it’s sarcastic or playing and putting another person in an uncomfortable position, and just being very disrespectful to them, physically, mentally, emotionally, verbally.” In high school however, the most common form of bullying is verbal abuse. This is how bullies show that they have all the power. In Melinda’s case, she was verbally and physically bullied.
“I think it happens every day,” says Berg. And it’s true; every day people wake up knowing that they have to go to school and they know exactly what is going to happen when they get there. Bullies target the same people in their classes and this specfic targeting creates fear for victims. The victims are afraid to come to school because of it. When this happens, it has gone too far. “It’s not safe, and kids have to be safe here,” Berg continues. Even though school is considered to be one the safest places for students, for the victims, it’s a place of torment. It’s not safe for them and it won’t be until something is done about it.
Teachers play a big role in what goes on in the classroom, whether it’s daily schoolwork or a problem such as bullying. When the boys were bullying Melinda, the teacher was the only one who didn’t notice, despite the fact that the whole class did. Looking around the classroom, one would have oberserved that the teacher was on the computer almost the entire time, until it was too late to help her student. It was only when Melinda had tears streaming down her face that the teacher walked up to her and demanded to know what was going on, even though she was only a few feet away when it was happening. The boys claimed they didn’t do it and blamed the only person in the room who had the guts to say, “Stop, it’s not right.” At the right moment the bell rang and the boys walked away, unscathed, with smirks on their faces. The issue went unreported.
A recent survey taken by www.how-to-stop-bullying.com showed that half of all bullying incidents go unreported. Why does this happen?
“I think that people that are doing the bullying have poor self confidence, they don’t know how to manage their feelings, they have probably been hurt in the past, and this is how they know to take care of business," said Berg. "They may have grown up in a situation where they have been bullied; usually that’s the case when the bully has been bullied and so that’s their way of getting back. So they usually pick on people that are not as strong as them.”
Back in the classroom, on the day Melinda was picked on, the boys seemed almost bored, as if they had nothing to do while their work sat in front of them. To them it seemed okay to whisper about her and make her feel like less of a person than them. To them, it was funny. They chose someone who was not as strong as them and someone who would not retaliate. As Berg says, “There are a lot of different ways that bullying can happen." That was just one of them.
There have been other incidents in past years, Melinda said, where boys similar to those mentioned above bullied her to tears. In the beginning, the boys would move her backpack around or hide it when she left the room. “The bullying was more direct then,” she said. “When I tried to confront them, they laughed at me and started calling me a dog and making barking noises. The teacher only noticed after I got slapped in the face during class, and the reaction from the other students was enough to finally get her attention.” It got so out of control that at the end of the year, the bullies took her backpack and stole her iPod. “It just didn’t make sense, I hadn’t done anything to them. I stayed out of their way," said Melinda, adding, "I didn’t know how to get help." This is one of the reasons why bullying continues in our classrooms and remains unnoticed.
When someone makes you uncomfortable, the best way to handle it is not by staying quiet. It is to confide in someone, letting someone know that it is happening and letting that person help you. It can be a parent, a guidance counselor, a teacher or even a friend. Dealing with it is much more helpful than coping with it on your own. Melinda agreed with this. “I should have gone to the administration before things got to that point. The thing is, I didn’t quite grasp what was going on before it was too late. When you think of ‘bullying,’ the image that the media insists on is one of people being shoved into lockers and getting beat up. This wasn’t physical abuse until the end, so I didn’t know to get help.” Many students who have experienced bullying keep quiet about it. Last year at Grant, out of 646 reported incidents, only two involved bullying, despite numerous other occurences, which went apparently unreported. This only allows the bullies to continue to victimize other students.
In the end, even one incident of bullying is enough to stick with you for the rest of your life. It can affect your life in a way that you never imagined. “I’ve talked with adults and done parent groups, and [when I ask] them to go back to a time when they were bullied...they always remember it quickly. So it may not necessarily shape them but the memory doesn’t necessarily go away,” said Berg about how bullying can affect someone in their adulthood.
Bullying can easily be stopped at school because it happens in the presence of many students. When one student is bullied, another can stand up to the bully and say that it’s not okay. Giving the person who is being bullied a voice that can prevent something drastic from happening is the first step.
Despite her experience, Melinda returned to class the following day and took her usual seat, to the surprise of many of her classmates. She did not cower away from her victimizers. No, she sat down in her usual seat next to the same boys and gave them a big smile. That’s when I thought, "Not only is she a strong girl, but she’s stronger than them because she put it behind her."
*Names have been changed |
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Written by Kristine Vail
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Wednesday, 10 March 2010 |
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The school board has struck again! Not only have they shortened our tutorial period, but now they’re back to strap us into our seats with a new finals schedule that has ensured that finals are more stressful. Even worse, however, is that at the end of the year we will have spent a few more precious hours in our seats in school. What could be behind this new obsession of “sit time” in the classroom? It all has to do with the fact that the PPS system has one of the shortest school years in the nation and we apparently need more time sitting in a chair. That’s where the finals schedule comes in.
Finals week of high school has proven to be one of the most stressful times in our high school careers. A week filled with long nights of studying and cramming, review on top of review, a scramble for grades to be checked and then checked again—all this and our other commitments. Some can describe finals as the school in an uproar with no calm or logically thinking individuals in sight. It would be fair to say that with the stress of the finals already, that giving less time to get them finished would actually create a bigger problem. Everyone is worried about being prepared—students and teachers alike. If the final itself wasn’t stressful enough, the preparation would be enough to send someone over the edge. This year's finals schedule—which left little room for any sort of time for make-ups or studying—left students and teachers around the school feeling the time crunch.
Finals is also a difficult time for teachers. Teachers spend hours creating, structuring, and grading finals, as well as conferencing with individuals about grades. This new finals schedule severely limited their ability to do all these things. In addition to giving the actual final they also have to enter the grades, which is a whole other ordeal. Teachers often have more than 100 students, making grading a challenge. The amount of hard work and stress that goes into creting and grading finals by teachers is often overlooked.
The school district continues to give unreasonable amounts of time for finals, not to make students and teachers happy but to fulfill their obligations to maximize hours in the school year. In addition to not being able to relate to teachers and students, the administration believes that students spending more time in class and more time in the classroom is what we need. The real reason for this finals schedule is that the district can’t regulate the quality of learning that we are recieving and they assume if they can count the minutes we spend sitting in a chair, that they can satisfy those concerned about our education.
The PPS system seems to think that as long as we keep students in the classroom they must be learning. So I ask you, what could you plan in a day where you have 25 minutes for a class period? You could daydream, as the teacher attempts to force some lesson plan down your throats. Or you can spend that valuable time studying for the AP Calculus test you couldn’t study for because you also had Physics and PSU English the next day. Twenty-five minutes is hardly enough time to take roll, let alone do anything constructive. As soon as we get into the class and settled we’re off to the next. When you try to fix one issue like the amount of time spent in a chair, you should also consider the problems it will cause and the effects that it will have on the those it’s implemented on.
The finals schedule has been changed every year for the last three years, and it seems that the only finals schedule that made sense and satisfied teachers was the one that we had last year. It allowed teachers a fair amount of time to create a final that assessed our skills effectively. It also gave teachers time to give retakes for those students who missed a final and also enough time to enter grades. This schedule appealed to not only the teachers but the students as well, for we got to sleep in and get out of school early. Some of that extra time was also used for additional studying and reviewing that could have been extremely useful this year, if we were given that opportunity. Last year we were given time to breathe.
This year's schedule caught most by surprise, and resulted in some finals being shorter, therefore taking less time to grade. It also increased the number of finals given in scan-tron format, that literally take no effort to grade and barely any effort to complete. All scan-trons do is test which students can make a prettier design with bubbling; it doesn’t assess thoughts, ideas, or concepts—not to bash on scan-trons but any students that can exercise their skill of process of elimination can figure it out. Having finals in high school that require little thought, writing and time will cause students to shudder at the thought of an in-class essay or written tests in college.
Students this year, instead of having just two finals in a day like last year, had three in a day. Junior Maria Phoutrides had AP US History, Physics, and Pre-Calculus all in one day. “It was really stressful. I actually had a legitimate breakdown,” says Phoutrides. She goes on to explain how the other commitments, like soccer and tutoring, took up most of her avaliable study time. She also believed that the wasted time we spent trying to learn something on the day of the 25-minute classes could be spent studying, or that perhaps elimianating these periods was worth having a finals schedule that didn’t kill us. Who knows, maybe next year we can have all the finals in one day and make it a real challenge.
The district desperately needs to come to a compromise with the teachers to try to figure out what amount of time would be acceptable for having a finals schedule we can all agree on. We need to take into account the amount of time it takes to grade well-constructed assessments and allow time for students to actually take a breath between a hectic finals schedule. Finals are already stressful enough, and our futures ride on our grades and our academic performance. So why would we want to make it more difficult? |
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Written by Katie Gilbert
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Wednesday, 10 March 2010 |
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“Picture yourself in a pre-calc class—you are taking a test. You finish that test and have five minutes to go to your next class where, say, you have to take an AP Biology test…you have two hard finals consecutively and only five minutes to breathe and transition between them.” This scenario, illustrated by mathematics teacher Pardis Navi, is one that was created by this year’s new finals schedule.
The announcement of the schedule brought moans and groans from students and staff alike. The schedule differs from last year’s by reducing students’ passing time from ten minutes to five, and taking away from students' study time and opportunities to talk to teachers. “It was cruel and unusual punishment to all,” sums up fine arts teacher Judi Brandel.
The abrupt changes to Grant’s finals schedule has brought on many complaints. Classes were filled with the lamentations of students crying out to anyone who would hear them while staff sat quietly, listening and silently taking in the complaints with those of their own. 'Why did this happen?' was the question on everyone’s mind.
The decision lay in the district’s hands, explains Vice Principal Kim Patterson. The district wanted to have students in class for more hours during finals week. Some believe that “more seat hours,” as many have chosen to describe this new goal, do not benefit the education of students. “Why can’t it be about quality and not quantity?” Brandel asks. This year’s schedule, she asserts, is about quantity and not quality – a mistake in her eyes.
One student who was particularly upset by the change in this year’s finals schedule was Caleb Taylor. He took the change, however, as an opportunity to write a letter in protest. The letter argued against the district’s decision on the matter and advocated for a change so that our finals schedule more resembles that of Grant’s 2008-2009 school year. Not only did he perceive the decision by the district as an injustice but he also protests that the change took away from his time to study and therefore do well in classes. “We already have enough stress,” he says.
Patterson agrees that the schedule was not as effective as it could have been. She referred to the schedule that universities and colleges use in which students face more writing based exams in a greater amount of time over the finals period. “I like finals that mimic college finals because they serve our college-bound students better,” she says, explaining that the schedule this year did not allow for this to happen. Patterson also voices her opinions on the lack of success of this schedule, saying “any hurried process at the end of a semester is not good for teachers and what’s not good for teachers is not good for students.”
How can we change future finals schedules to amend these issues? Patterson and Navi are not sure that there is anything we can do because it is ultimately a district decision. However, we can make a difference on the decision-making process by voicing our concerns, letting those who do make the decisions know that the schedule did not work for Grant. Taylor, the junior who wrote the letter on the finals schedule, certainly has hope for the effectiveness of his protests. He continues to seek out signatures from his classmates agreeing with his letter and has thus far given Principal Joseph Malone three copies of the letter with an estimated 100 signatures total.
When Navi was asked about the possibility of change for next year she replied, “For you, as a student, do you think that anyone would listen to you? If yes, then yes, if not then no,” implying that it is up to us. We can make change happen. Patterson, meanwhile, is confident that although we do not know what will change next year, “everything we do will make a difference” when it comes to fighting this matter. “I'll advocate for it,” she says with a determined fist in the air and big smile on her face. |
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Written by Katie Gilbert
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Wednesday, 10 March 2010 |
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In high school, college-bound students face an increasing amount of pressure to take on a heavy course load in order to impress those universities they dream of attending. This includes extracurricular activities and Advanced Placement (AP) courses as well as the required science, math, English, and world language courses. With so much going in their busy lives, where do students find the time to seek out what they really want in their futures or find a release from all their academic work?
Performing arts teacher Trisha Todd and fine arts teacher Judi Brandel have observed that high school students, especially those with heavy course loads, are forgetting about the art programs offered in high school. With six different art programs and 15 different classes offered during multiple periods of the school day, there are still those who have yet to see how art fits into their high school educations.
The US Department of Education recommends the arts to college-bound middle and junior high school students, asserting that: “Many colleges view participation in the arts and music as valuable experiences that broaden students’ understanding and appreciation of the world around them.” Junior Beth Carlson agrees. Carlson, who has been interested in the arts since her childhood, has been involved in theater at Grant since her freshman year and is currently a member of the Royal Blues. She has found that her participation in theater and Royal Blues have helped her in multiple ways.
Carlson joined theater her freshman year partly to overcome her stage fright, and partly to see what the course could offer her. “It didn’t really come naturally to me," she said. Theater was a challenge for Carlson because of her stage fright but it proved to be very rewarding. She was able to overcome her nervousness and put on a good show. “It’s a really good feeling,” said Carlson of her experiences of getting up on stage in front of peers. The best part of theater for her, however, is the response she receives from her classmates after a performance.
Whether they follow a small skit, a Royal Blues performance, or a school play, the reactions from those kids when they see her and her friends arrive on stage in their blue dresses and tie or the applause from a crowd in the Grant auditorium make her the happiest. In her words, “you perform because you like it, but you keep doing it for the reactions.”
If it wasn’t for the art classes offered at Grant, Carlson would probably not have experienced the passion she feels for performing or the arts. “Without art in school I would be pretty lost. It’s everything that I really like to do,” she explains, adding, “I think, overall, if you didn’t have art in school or if there was less of a focus or was taken less seriously the school would be less well rounded and less diverse. You need to have art as well as academic classes to have a good school because it is important to have an outlet for everyone."
Creative outlets are not only key to students on a personal level but are also fundamental to maintaining a well-rounded education. As a performing arts teacher, Todd explains that it isn’t good for kids to come to school and sit all day listening to lectures; they need to be able to do more. Art allows students not only to express themselves and become more creative, but also to work on using both sides of their brain, something that is “necessary in terms of intelligence,” says Todd. “It’s like exercise: if you don’t exercise your whole body, then you’re out of balance."
Todd believes that as students are maturing a balanced education is fundamental to becoming a balanced human being. Art is a key component of this. “It teaches us what it is to be a human being,” says Todd. She believes that art teaches people to get in touch with their inner selves and creativity. In her opinion, those who are in touch with their creativity have richer lives.
Carlson and Brandel also agree that an art course is essential to a student’s education as it teaches them what our other classes do not. It teaches creativity, a different way of looking at things, and it promotes in-depth analysis of subject matter. Carlson explains that theater has helped her to understand people and life experiences better and has taught her to think in different way.
Despite all of this, students still do not realize the importance of art in their lives. Brandel and Todd hypothesize that this is because students have not been exposed to art in their lives or schedules. We aren’t reaching beyond the academic aspect of school. We aren’t adequately discovering all that Grant has to offer us or seeking out what truly interests us. We are too focused on getting into college, following the trend of electing to take AP classes over those that might offer a little bit more — those that might teach us about ourselves and what we want for our futures. |
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Written by Caleb Taylor
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Wednesday, 10 March 2010 |
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To Whom It May Concern:
The finals schedule that is being used at US Grant High School is unfairly taxing of the students at Grant. A two-day format will lead to overworking of students, and thus to their reduced performance on the finals. Last year we were given three days to complete finals, and each exam lasted around two hours. This lead to a more relaxed atmosphere during the tests, and allowed students sufficient time to give each question their full attention. This year each final lasted only 80 minutes, shorter than a block period. Furthermore, past experience has proven that a five-minute passing time is not enough for all the tests to be collected, for students to pack their belongings and be ready for the next exam, in a timely and humane fashion.
The schedule on Wednesday is not conducive to learning. Have you ever attended several 25-minute meetings in a row in different parts of a building? Try it and see how productive it really is.
We believe that a return to a three-day finals schedule that was in use last year will alleviate stress before, during, and after the exams. Please take this into consideration while deciding upon the schedule for the second semester schedule. We want to be able to do our best, and this schedule just doesn’t let us do that.
*This letter, addressed to PPS officials is posted for student signatures can be found in Ms. Navi’s room (229) to be signed. |
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