WHERE ARE OUR CLASSMATES?

By: Isaac Dennet and Iara Garcia

It’s getting pretty bad. Students are not staying in class. Why?

We decided to go break down the reasons behind the disappearances of our student body in their classes throughout the day, and we have some reasons to share. Let’s break down these points and anonymous interviews into categories, being; one: classes are overwhelming, two: classes are not engaging, and three: there not being any reason to stay. Let’s start with one.

Classes are overwhelming.

Some students have really been struggling with school since the pandemic, and even before the pandemic many kids have found school a challenge. And that’s fine, school isn’t one size fits all. But it does mean that the students who aren’t getting the support they need are struggling, and don’t want to stay in class. Even more than that, students may have been placed in classes with large, stressful work loads. Some kids just don’t have the time in their day either. Some kids have fallen so far behind that they cannot even learn anymore. They could have stuff from home. Here’s interviews and opinions from our students about this

“School is really stressful right now, and all it makes me want to do is give up.”

“Its overwhelming sometimes to have already some much in mind and getting to class and just putting more weight to my lie so I prefer to stay out until I prepare myself. The school system don’t force me to attende to class so I can just put up an excuse and stay out”

How could we fix this? I think that this is fixable by giving students a better support structure from classmates at school. I think that if we had better class sizes, and a better team and social structure, I think it would relieve a lot of the stress on students. They would also have more people to reach out to during class, or even out of class.

Classes are not engaging.

Y eah, classes can be super boring. This also ties into the point after this. Students may not be understanding, and therefore, the class is so boring! They also may not have any friends in the class, or the class dynamic may not be super enjoyable. A good example that I saw the most was math. Students were behind, had no friends, and wanted to skip. It was really bad for math.

“I just don’t like my teacher, is boring the way they teach me, I feel that thats why I prefer just staying out, I learn better from wikipedia”

“Well, some teachers are boring and they don’t know how to teach their classes, they should motivate them to come to their classes.”

What is the benefit of staying?

I think this one might be a little harder to understand, so we will circle back to a point from earlier. Kids are so far behind that it is hard, if not impossible , to learn some of the things they are learning in class right now. What is the point of staying if you aren’t learning anything anyway? Again, this is due to very large class sizes. Teachers do not have enough time in a period to help 20-30 students catch up. There is too much going on.

We talked with many kids, and got some more opinions from them. “Honestly… they [the classes] are so packed that it is really hard to focus or get anything done, really. There isn’t really a point anymore.” Or, this quote for another student; “You want me to stay through a whole period for me to get nothing done with people I don’t like? I’ll pass.” From their point of view, you are getting negative things done by staying! There are zero reasons to stay. Even from the point of view of: you will catch up eventually, that isn’t really true.

Many teachers that I talked with referenced the fact that it has been a struggle since covid to keep kids on a path to success, with varying degrees of skill and proficiency in different topics. They said they would need more time or smaller class sizes to catch everyone up with where they should be. Many teachers said that no matter what, if kids can’t somehow catch up themselves, without any help, they may be left behind.

So how do we fix this? I think that first, more teachers for smaller classes should help a lot. Coming out of covid, we have less teachers, and more need for students to get individual help. We can’t help kids with the amount of teachers we have right now. Also, this isn’t really too easy to do, but we need to relieve mental stress on some of our students right now. It’s killing a lot of students who were doing good before.

So here’s a summary of problems. Large class sizes, not enough individual student attention, and a large student mental stress amount. Just remember more than anything, to put in as much work as you can into your school. This shapes your entire future.

Teacher Kaylee Krapfl

Q. Name?

A. Ms.Krapfl or Ms.K

Q. Favorite color?

A. Cargo Green

Q. What do you teach?