I was sitting at a new restaurant/bar in Como, MS this past Monday with some friends of mine. The atmosphere was genial, the company pleasant; beers were drank and great conversation was had. Not everyone taught at the same school, so, naturally, differences between schools was a common theme for the night. Someone from my school brought up a topic that was very interesting to me. Interesting not only because of how egregious its existence is, but also because it’s something about which I had never really thought.
So we’re sitting there and the subject somehow shifts to in-school assemblies and one of us goes on a justified rant about it all. While I am sure that we both agree that these are great little rewards for our students, in the end we are a school under conservatorship for having very poor state test scores. Also, our school has one of the lowest graduation rates in a state with low graduation rates. When we are constantly reminded of this and constantly pressured to improve our teaching and even berated when we do not perform well, does that not lend evidence to the argument that missing a period and a half or more for an unnecessary student body meeting about whatever is somewhere in the realm of being ludicrous? These kids need to know that they should take their schoolwork seriously. What they don’t need is to all meet outside for the entirety of first period to have three or four students say exactly the same thing and intermittently sing hymns, especially when we have an intervention period that’s just perfect for such a thing. These kids need to be aware of breast cancer and be told that domestic abuse is a terrible thing. What they don’t need is to miss the last two periods of the day on a test day watching skits and being talked to by the police department. Just today they missed second period and half of third to watch some skits and listen to some raps about not doing drugs. Once again, the message was great, but the students at a school with our school’s reputation should not be missing vital class time to watch this stuff. These are activities that I believe should occur in your “normal, everyday” high school, but certainly not in a high school under conservatorship. If they must happen, then they should be fewer and farther in between because the things I’ve talked about have occurred in the past two weeks and I feel like I am probably forgetting something (oh yeah... homecoming... I don’t even want to get into that one).
Anyway, it’s not that I had never actually noticed these things. I can vividly remember asking a couple teachers if we would ever have a “normal” day again (whatever that means) after having assemblies, homecoming, and what not for a week and a half. However, hearing this teacher go off on the matter really made me think differently about it
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