Jonathan

Teaching is too rushed. 3 days straight the teacher is giving you information after information and you’re doing one page of work. You learn one thing on a specific day. After three days of that, you’re not going to ace a quiz, because you’ve barely even worked on each piece of information deeply. Then it’s off to a new topic. It’s rushed. You don’t have time to think about each specific piece of information.

I wish I had a better understanding of what we’re learning. You can go to a lot of people and they’ll also feel like we just keep going to school to get dumped a bunch of information, but you don’t understand any of it . I’d like a clearer understanding of what we’re actually learning.

We need slower learning experiences. They’ve made it where the way students get education they want a quicker pace. They want to be done with most materials by the end of the year. But clearly it’s not a good thing, because not a lot of students are going to know half the material. It’s not sticking with them.

Maybe we could extend the length of how long they teach a specific subject. If they want to teach about a time in history, instead of one specific day you learn about one thing and the next day something else, they could give you two days to think about. They wouldn’t just be giving you information. You’d actually be putting in your own thoughts.

We’re told to memorize instead of learn. You’re told to remember something and learn, but you don’t really know anything about it.

It’s pretty exhausting. You’re already going to school pretty tired. Then you go to class and are handed a piece of paper. You’re not even learning. You’re given information and told to memorize it to use it on a test.

Most of them are connected to a bigger idea, but each day they’re teaching about a different area. You’ll learn about one side and then the next side and then the aftereffects of a war. You’re not given enough time to dig deep into what you need to learn. They all connect together, but you have to memorize so much. It’s a lot to remember. You’re left on the last day, asking, “What happened in this again?”

In a test you’ll remember what you learned the day before, but if you’re trying to remember something from the first day, you’ll be stuck.

This experience has a bad effect on students. We are getting left behind.

Say you are absent for a day. You get sick and don’t go to school. The next day you come, everything you were supposed to learn on the day you missed, you’re already left behind. If you miss a day, it’s bad for you. Teachers just push forward.

Say for English, you don’t have time to read. The next day you’re already left behind and then you have even more reading. You can’t figure out what’s happening that day. The same could go for a math class. You’re learning an equation one day. Then the next day you’re making it bigger. If you miss the first day, you’re already behind and the next day you’re even more lost.

The information doesn’t stick. Like say they’re asking you how much you know about WWI. You could say what you already know and piece it together with other information you know. Piecing together information helps it grow. That’s what makes it stick with you.

If you were to ask a majority of students, they would say either some of them completely give up, because it’s just too much to take in. Or they’ll keep trying, but in the end they’re going to feel confused. Even some teachers feel like the learning is too quick for students, because they’re told they have to teach so much by the deadline. Even teachers realize this is too quick for teachers to catch on.

After hearing all of this, I hope that you agree we need to make some changes.

Make it less rushed. Extend days for certain things. Combine materials that need to be learned. Teach things together at the same time. Instead of one subject one day and the next day something completely different, you’re teaching them together, so it sticks.

They’re the ones in charge. They already know what they’re going to do that day. Some teachers will give you more time and let students catch up. Some teachers think if you’re left behind, you just have to make it up another day.

For me, I literally just waited until a completely new subject to try and understand it again. Once you’re behind, even if you get makeup work, it’s really hard because you’re completely by yourself. I try to wait until a new subject comes around and try to understand that one instead. Even when the teachers try to teach us one-on-one we’re already too behind. They’re using things we learned before this topic, but we don’t know what those other things are. We ask, “What does this even mean?”