Ava McLaughlin’s Capstone

For my capstone, I explored whether or not schools are progressing or regressing and also whether or not students enjoy the content they are learning. I chose this because I have personally felt like schools do a poor job of preparing me for the future, and where I once found joy in learning, I now find boredom or hatred.

So there were two main goals in mind, one to look at ways how schooling has progressed and then how it has regressed as well. I then wanted to see if any of these had an impact on the way people view schools. That would all be done through my own research online. The next goal was to hear from some of the students how they felt. I know how I feel, but am I alone in this? I also found out that I needed to also hear from the teacher’s perspective as they can also become annoyed by the school and the people within it. With that in mind, I interviewed students and teachers about their feelings surrounding the school system. In the end, I made a slideshow to talk about what I found and came across and the ways that we can all work to improve these things. The slideshow not only addresses students’ concerns but teachers’ as well because oftentimes their emotions and feelings get pushed to the side and ignored. I truly hope that people listen close and well because this is our education and it is to my understanding that we are not learning nor catering to what people really need.

Most of my time was spent reading this book, Tinkering Towards Utopia. This book was provided to me by my mentor Mr. Clapper. This book essentially covered many of the major questions I had stepping into this project. What does reform look like? How does reform happen? Has there been any sort of progress since 1995 when the book was first published. This was my starting point. After that I started my interviews.

From left to right you can see Mr. Clapper, Ms. Gasser (the best advisor), and finally Profe Hernandez. Each of these wonderful teachers allowed me to interview them and gain insight into what makes them enjoy their job and what also makes school difficult for them. It is essential that I was able to speak to them seeing as they become just as affected by school life as us students.

We then have four SLA students that I also interviewed. From left to right you can see Isabel Boix, Cia Klot, Mikkel Watts, and Maya Robinson. The purpose of their interviews were to gain some of their insight within not only SLA but their middle schools as well. From their interviews I gathered that most of their opinions around school started to generally shift in middle school, and those opinions were only enhanced in high school.

These lovely four people are some of my friends from CAPA and my cousin. From left to right, we have Leah, Charlie, Lily, and Cinnamon on the bottom. Seeing as I had the perspective from teachers at SLA and students at SLA, I knew I needed to know what people thought about school outside of SLA. The overall opinion for them is that school needs to be reworked. There are things that work and things that don’t. Lily, goes to school in the suburbs so it was a key part that I get the perspective from outside of the city.

From conducting my own interviews and reading, Tinkering Towards Utopia, I have learned that majority of the problems that were once present in 1995, we don’t see as much. There are others that have stood the test of time, such as standardized testing. To learn more about what the teachers and students have to say you can see the slideshow I put together here.

Annotated Bibliography

Dickinson, Kevin. 2020. “7 subjects that should be taught in U.S. schools.” Big Think. https://bigthink.com/the-present/subjects-taught-school/. This source brings up a really good point as to why we need these classes taught in our school. However I disagree with religion being its own separate class, I think that it should be taught in a world history class setting as a unit. Only because of the multiple ways religion can be connected to the atrocities throughout history. Religion connects to the world’s development and that’s why it should be taught in a World History setting.

Douglas, Nick. 2018. “You Shouldn’t Have to Read These Books in High School.” Lifehacker. https://lifehacker.com/you-shouldn-t-have-to-read-these-books-in-high-school-1828549376. Ok I completely agree with this for the most part. I don’t like the Great Gatsby. It is completely overrated and being asked to break it apart and interpret it makes no sense after how many times it has been interpreted. Books in general at school have a way of telling one single narrative to teach a different lesson but ultimately nothing is different. During my time at SLA I have only read 3 books written by women all of the rest have been written by men, mainly white men. This is where I am telling you that there is only one narrative, there is hardly any diversity. Most books, I, at least haven’t been able to to connect with or enjoy reading.

“Filing Taxes Should Never Be Taught In School.” 2017. Integrated Social Studies. https://integratedsocialstudies.com/2017/10/29/filing-taxes-should-never-be-taught-in-school/. The problem with the source is that they think there isn’t time to learn these things, or that children simply would not be interested in learning how to prevent themselves for being thrown in jail for tax evasion. It’s not that we don’t have the basic skills of reading and writing, it’s the fact that when it comes time to pay the government we have no idea how much we could possibly owe to the government. This is not on teachers to know because even if they don’t, teachers should be teaching students the basics to taxes, how much they should hold back incase of a situation where their job didn’t take enough money. They can also talk about the different forms of taxes so people can understand what they are being taxed on and why it is important.

Fischler, Jacob. 2021. “Understanding Charter Schools vs. Public Schools | K-12 Schools | US News.” USNews.com. https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/understanding-charter-schools-vs-public-schools. This source provides information on the differences between a public school and a charter school. It allows one to gain insight into what the benefits are, the amount of control the schools have by themselves, and what class size and course work.

Lynch, Matthew. n.d. “18 Reasons the U.S. Education System is Failing.” The Edvocate. Accessed January 28, 2022. https://www.theedadvocate.org/10-reasons-the-u-s-education-system-is-failing/. Although this lists some reasons as to why the school system is failing us it does not always apply to every single school in the private curriculum. However it is nice to know that there are other ways people see the school system is failing students.

Pierce, Emily. 2021. “Private School vs. Public School | K-12 Schools | US News.” USNews.com. https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/private-school-vs-public-school. Similar to the first source, this one compares Public Schools to Private Schools. All of this information can help me compare and contrast the differences for all three to help make a distinction between all of them and how each one suffers in its own way.

Porter, Sara. 2019. “Reader suggestions: Books we should teach in schools.” MPR News. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/02/08/custom-required-reading-list-for-high-schoolers. Books taught in school should be something that kids can identify with to some level and relate to the world they are in. Especially if they are going to be required to write an analytical essay. Granted yes, there will be those who don’t connect with the material, however I do believe that more students would enjoy and connect more with a book that relates to the world they are in or experiencing rather than the books that were taught to our teachers, and their teachers, and their teachers.

Srinivasan, LaVerne E. 2021. “What Changes to the US Education System Are Needed to Support Long-Term Success for All Americans? | Future of Learning & Work.” Carnegie Corporation of New York. https://www.carnegie.org/topics/topic-articles/future-learning-work/what-changes-us-education-system-are-needed-support-long-term-success-all-americans/. This source is beneficial for me to start taking already processed ideas of how to change the school curriculum and adding it to my own. It also touches on the effects that the pandemic had on students and their education, and how many people noticed the flaws in the curriculum.

“The Times Have Changed—Our Schools Haven’t | What Isn | Oregon’s Challenge.” n.d. Oregon Learns. Accessed January 28, 2022. https://oregonlearns.org/oregons-challenge/what-isnt-working/. So this one takes all thoughts I already have about the school system and organizes them perfectly. The entire school system is completely ridiculous with the things that are taught. Most schools are extremely competitive and look for you to not make mistakes. When in the real world you need to be able to work with people and not only make mistakes but learn from them. Not be reprimanded for them. Also school itself is just straight forward if that makes sense. Like we sit all day, have to ask permission to use the bathroom, we’re only supposed to speak when spoken to and just no no no no.

“Why School doesn’t Prepare us for Life?” 2022. The Black Sheep Community. https://www.theblacksheep.community/school-doesnt-prepare-us-for-life/. This is gold yes ma’am! It speaks on the ways the school system itself has not prepared students for the world. They talk about the lessons we are taught in school and how they are useful to those who are going into specific fields that require these kinds of things. But they also go into the lessons that aren’t taught to us, the ones that we have to figure out by ourselves; and some do figure them out, but others need guidance and help and never get that help!