It wasn’t all that long ago when during the last 2 – 3 years of high school, I was expected to complete many projects at a time, sit several exams on the same day and work on multiple independent study units. I didn’t only get these done but had to make sure that my work was up to par, that I got the grades, made the cut!
Note that no teachers were expected to give up any of their own class time to give students extra school time to complete projects. We completed projects on our own time (as we should).
I worked super hard at school and still had plenty of time to socialize at reasonable hours as well as participate in extra curricular activities!
What’s happened to that drive in students?!
I don’t teach the 10th grade but I was nagged to be a supervisor to a student to guide him through the only personal project that carries a large percentage of his final grade all year.
Did he show up for meetings?....no! (in fact he was dragged into my classroom by the skin off his teeth by another teacher!) Did he follow up on his project?... no !Did he have a focus to his project? … no! Did he know how to write a report, be it structure, language or bibliography?...NO!
The BIG question… did he WANT to learn… you guessed it … no!!
Does he want the grade?... but of course!! (this applies to about 95% of the grade 10 student population)
So, what I want to know is this: Why give students who don’t care to work for the grade extra time during regular school hours (ie missing classes) to work on projects they have no interest in? Is this time well deserved?
I’d also like to see what would happen to those students if and when they get themselves into university (emphasis on the IF). What sort of future are we building for ourselves?
