Education May Not Be as Helpful as Intended

The educators at Tyngsboro’s Innovation Academy think that they’re doing a favor for their students, but little do they know they are actually hurting their future. Arguments could be made that classes such as Concert Choir and Creative Writing are as necessary for students as Financial Literacy and Journalism. When students go to these classes that don’t help their future, they get bored and don’t pay attention, whilst they could be learning how to write a check or pay their taxes.

In the real world, students need to know a lot of things that they do not learn about in school. Some of these things are cooking, paying taxes, learning to apply for a mortgage, and so on. The reality is that these important life skills are being replaced with learning what year Mandela stopped Apartheid, what chapter seven in Of Mice and Men signifies, or how mitochondria is the powerhouse of a cell.

Although these things might come in handy once or twice in a person's whole life, they are not going to be as helpful as other things. When asked, Noah Landis, a junior at the school, says that he agrees. “I take Financial Literacy. This is going to actually help me in life, i don’t need to know why a dumb person died in a dumb book,” said Noah, hoping to get all A’s and B’s in all six of his honors classes this year. Jonathan Doliver, a sophomore at the school, commented on the dilemma as well. “Oh gee, how do I write this check? Oh yeah, that's right! The mitochondria is the powerhouse of plant and animal cells,” he says sarcastically.

The overlap between what's important and what isn’t lies in what we will need to know in college, jobs, and further day to day life in general. Due to all of this, it is obvious that high schools around the country are not paying attention to what is really important, but rather what the norm is to teach in every grade. The classes that students take should be more relevant to life instead of somewhat useless knowledge we will not need to know unless we pursue that passion in life later on.

Cellphone Apps Becoming Too Tempting for Students

“Do Apps Help You or Just Waste Your Time?” reads the New York Times headline for their recent article on how teenagers might be taking technology out of hand and taking advantage of what it has to offer. It is common now for students as young as six or seven all the way up to seniors in college to use a tablet or cellphone to do their work. A lot of these kids and young adults will oftentimes find little sneaky ways to get around doing the work that they are supposed to be doing in class, and instead play internet games. People who are saying they are using their phones for schoolwork are really avoiding school overall and using social media instead.

Sometimes, we will see a new useful app pop up in the internet world, like how in Google Play you can download an app called MyHomework, an app solely dedicated to making it easier for students to record homework on their devices and write if they are done or not.

Seeing these types of things gives hope, but playing Devil’s advocate, the reality of it is that most of the students who say that they are using their devices to help them with their schoolwork are actually using them to play games and do other stuff that is more entertaining to them.

Schools such as ours, IACS, have many fully loaded carts of computers at the students’ disposal. With permission from the librarian, Heather Landis, you can even take a computer out and use it at school and home. The real question is, is this a good thing or not? Sometimes, students have been seen getting migraines from using computers for so long that they lose track of time. Students have also been seen getting headaches from looking at the light of the computers for too long.

These devices can be used for good, by using them to record homework and type up documents quickly. On the other hand, students could be tricking the general authoritative community by making them believe they are doing schoolwork, but in reality, playing games and using social media. Teachers need to make a point to watch what their students are doing on their devices rather than assuming they are doing their schoolwork.

Mental Heath at Innovation Academy Charter School

All IACS students would probably agree that the homework load is a little more than manageable. It takes the fun out of weekends, the joy out of sleep, and adds to the harshness of waking up on early mornings. Some students get so stressed about homework that they take days off just to stay at home and do late work.
“Taking a day off lets me get more done than I would at school,” said a sophomore at the school who has recently taken a day off from school to get late work done at home. But stress isn't just a thing of students; teachers also need some days to themselves to just relieve their minds of stress.
When asked anonymously, a teacher at the school said that if they had the option, they would happily take a mental health day. They said that since they have to teach, it is hard for this to happen. This shows that students are not so different from teachers. 
Take Noah Landis, a junior with ADD who is struggling with school, taking all honors classes, and works at the Boys and Girls Club in Billerica. “It’s a lot to think about,” he said. “I can never hang out with friends. [Homework] also interferes with my job.” He is also a three season athlete at the school. Being an athlete requires the student to maintain a 70 or higher in every class, and if a grade drops below a 70, students are required to have it fixed and notify the athletic department that the grade was brought up by printing a screenshot of the improved X2 grades. This grade requirement adds to the stress. When Noah has a lot of homework, he will stay up until midnight or 1:00 in the morning trying to make sure he is getting the grades he wants. This makes him very tired the next day, which makes doing homework a struggle.
Here is how the cycle goes. When a student or teacher has too much work, they have to do all of that work and fall behind on the work that they are missing for doing their late work. It is a vicious cycle of missing work in many classes, and trying to make all of it up as more homework is handed out. But when this happens to a teacher, they have no time to grade the work for students, which makes taking a break harder for a teacher. As for students, they are faced with the challenge of using their weekend as a school recovery session and missing out on activities with their friends. Otherwise, they will fail their classes, and not make get accepted into a good college. They will also miss out on sleep, like Noah, and not be able to focus as well on school work, instead thinking about sleeping.
Hailey Fitch, a sophomore at IACS, says that she has replaced her social life with school work. She admits to procrastinating and giving up when her homework load becomes too much. “Yes [my personal life has been affected by school]. I don’t have a social life. All I do is stay at home and do homework and chill with netflix,” she said unsarcastically. She also admitted to not being able to focus a lot of the time. This shows that students are not able to focus on work at home, so how are they supposed to get caught up?
Once the day is over and all work is done, all you have time for is getting some food in your system and heading to bed. When asked, about 1/2 of all high school students admitted to “going home, eating, and crashing.” Although it is healthy to get food and sleep, it is also important to have some time to yourself doing nothing. The school offers an interesting variety of choice blocks, twice a week for a little more than an hour, which help students relax and do something they enjoy doing. For example, Meditation is offered during Friday’s Choice Block, a time when students go to Mrs. Derival to learn all types of ways to relax and wind down. If you’re more of a writer, you can report to Mr. Hinkle on the Tuesday or Friday choice block for The Innovator Choice Block, a place where you can write for the school newspaper with your friends and report on the latest happenings at the school. Students feel more relaxed after choice block, mainly because they can be themselves and settle down, forgetting about anything else going on around them.
As a result of all of this, students have a hard time focusing on work at home and in school, resulting in bad grades. The bad grades need to be fixed at some point, so they fix them during the time that they are supposed to be doing classwork. This results in them falling even further behind, and lowering their grade even more. As their grades drop, their families yell at them to bring their grades up, lowering their bonds with their parents. The school should see this and realize that they are not only stressing students out, they are making it impossible to succeed in life. Having a lesser work load will fix all of these problems, but also, students with some of these problems should go to extra help and get things sorted out, that way they can live a healthy, pleasant, and successful life.