Review basketball? Gimme a break. We all know our student teacher’s obsessed with basketball, but this is a little too much. Today we had a big test in history, so yesterday, of course, was the review game. Each person answered questions and then tried to throw a ball into a wastebasket from either of 7 spots, each giving a different amount of points if you made it in. Your team only scored points if you made it in, even if you already answered the question perfectly.

Yeah, it was fun. But it’s stupid for school. No way should one’s basketball skills affect whether they will receive extra credit on the test or not. My favorite part was when a girl spoke up and said, “What does this have to do with our World History skills?” I almost laughed out loud. Finally, someone else other than me and my friend share this viewpoint.

By the way, remember my English essay? My teacher loved it. She told me that she enjoyed reading it, and that she showed to her husband, she’ll show it to the director of the literature magazine at our school, and she’ll share it with her other classes. You know, if a teacher likes that kind of anti-current-education-methods kind of essay, perhaps my ideas aren’t that unpopular, after all.

school, history, sports, activities, English , essays, writing, teachers

So, when I saw the reference on the blackboard to this computer game that I happen to like, I was excited. But I soon realized that today’s history lesson had nothing to do with computer games. We’re studying the Industrial Revolution, right? Yes, we are. So for today’s assignment, we were supposed to take a piece of grid paper, we had a “budget” of $100,000 and we were supposed to plan a city. Then, we would give it a name and explain in a detailed paragraph why we designed it the way we did and – get this – why we picked the name.

And yet again, it is simply impossible to do this activity without, of course, coloring in all the zones and buildings on the grid paper. Why? WHY? What does this teach us? It’s not even fun. So the teacher cannot argue that she’s trying to make learning fun, because this isn’t. The real Sim City game is fun. This – no.

I guess it’s just busywork. What that means is that our teacher just couldn’t stand the thought of us going home tonight and not doing any homework from her class. No. We MUST do homework from this class tonight, or else our time will be mercilessly wasted. And the homework we do must be as totally pointless as possible, because after all, she’s not supposed to actually teach us anything. She’s supposed teach herself how to teach.

school, history, coloring, activities

In response to a comment someone left on here (thanks for commenting, by the way), no, I’m not a bookworm. Haven’t read nonfiction for years, actually. Just because I don’t want to grow up not knowing shit about the world around me doesn’t make me a bookworm. It makes me a teenager who’s a bit different from everyone else. Other than that, I’m very normal. NOT a nerd, geek, bookworm, loser, or any other nice high school terminology. I have lots of friends, go to parties, get up at 6 to do my hair and makeup, and love shopping. That all is not very bookwormy behavior right there.

The reason why I didn’t reveal what I really thought was because, don’t forget, I’m stuck in this school until graduation. There’s no reason for me to encourage people to call me a bookworm. If you’ve ever been in high school, you know to avoid confrontation. It’s how people like me, who’re not exactly like everyone else, survive without having their high school years made miserable. If you want to flaunt how different you are and how much contempt you have for average people, you’re going to pay. Tough.

History class was a JOKE yesterday, and I’m not kidding (no pun intended). It now hurts to roll my eyes.

Our incompetent student teacher happens to be obsessed with basketball. Also, she has absolutely no control over the class. None whatsoever. So it was not difficult for the class to persuade her to let them watch a basketball game in class instead of learn.

So she wrote notes on the board really fast, read them out loud with almost no explanation, and turned the game back on. She kept saying that if she sees our regular teacher coming down the hall, she would turn it off really quick and pretend to be lecturing. Which means that this isn’t allowed.

Now, look here. This woman (or girl, rather) is in charge of a large chunk of my high school history education. It’s a good thing I’m responsible enough to learn on my own. But half the class isn’t. Knowledge needs to be forced down their throats, or else they’ll grow up stupid. This here teacher is not doing her fair share of the work.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t about to complain. Actually, I pretended to the class and all of my friends that this class period was the best thing since summer vacation was invented. Only one kid in the class complained, but that was only because she liked to dissent from popular opinion. I dissent from popular opinion without shoving it in the faces of people who really couldn’t care less about my dissent from any opinion whatsoever.

In short, it was the most pathetic waste of a class period since…yesterday? For me, there can never be a day of school without at least some pathetic wasting of class periods.

school, history, teachers

For some reason, French class has really been getting on my nerves lately. The teacher in that class must have, like, missed the lesson on how not to alienate the whole class against her.

Today, I had finished the homework in class and, believing that I had learned this chapter’s content exceptionally well (ha), I took out a copy of the school newspaper and began reading. I hadn’t even gotten through half of the essay about academic dishonesty before my teacher addressed me and said, “Tu devrais etudier le vocabulaire!” (“You’re supposed to be studying vocabulary!”) I sighed and glanced at the clock. 2 or 3 minutes of class left. Rolling my eyes, I turned to my friend and said, “What’s the point of etudier-ing le vocabulaire if we’re getting out of here in, like, a minute?” She passed me a look of acknowledgement, because such a scenario occurs even to the best of us at some point in our illustrious French education.

So I got out my folder and flipped pages around in it (glancing sparingly at the vocab sheet and not even reading it) until the bell blessfully rang. That seemed to satisfy my French teacher, since we all know how much more educational flipping pages around is than reading an essay about what is considered cheating and why you shouldn’t do it.

school, French, teachers

My French teacher’s newest French-revolution-style torture device is making the whole class sing some ridiculous kid song translated into French. Today, it was Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. At which point the whole class had to stand up, sing this crap in French, and “do the motions”, so to speak.

Yeah, yeah. This makes us learn faster. Mind you, it JUST SO HAPPENS that I remember all the body parts except the ones we practiced with this song. Ok, so I remember “head” and “toes”, but not shoulders and knees. Therefore, I think we can safely conclude that singing this idiotic kid song does not contribute to the learning process. Or, at the very least, MY learning process. Now, my learning process happens to be faster than the learning processes of most of the other students in the room. Therefore, if I still can’t remember it, they probably can’t either. Especially since they don’t care about their education nearly as much as I do.

Not to mention that it was just embarassing. I hate leaning over so that everyone can see my arse. I wish teachers would remember their teenagerhoods when teaching teenagers. They would do well to remember our constant self-consciousness and at least ATTEMPT to teach without making us miserable and worried. Maybe, if you subtract the social pressures from this equation of learning, the end result will be a greater amount of learning. You know, just saying.

Once, we had to sing a song that was made up of the past participles of a bunch of verbs we were supposed to remember the past participles. Whether I memorized them because of the song or of my own accord, I can fairly say that I don’t remember. However, the stupid tune did get stuck in my head for extended periods of time. I mean, come on. French is 4th period for me. That means 3 more periods during which I’ll be annoying the crap out of my classmates by humming/singing/tapping it.

So, please. If you teach French, stick to French. I didn’t take choir for a reason.

school, French, activities, singing

Because I live in Ohio, sophomores have to take their OGTs (Ohio Graduation Tests) this week. Don’t ask me why “Graduation” tests are taken during the sophomore year, but whatever.

Anyways, I am mercifully a freshman and not a sophomore, so I’m not taking them. However, my biology class (which is technically a “sophomore” class) has to do a ridiculous amount of reviewing for them. About half the class is freshmen. We still have to do it. Apparently, the sophomores take their science OGT on Friday, so our teacher says, “We’re reviewing up until Friday so you don’t forget.” I’m thinking…I will most definetly forget this by March of next year.

The stupidest thing is…there are three other periods of Scholarship Biology, all with about half and half freshmen and sophomores. So they should have put all the freshmen in two classes and all the sophomores in two other classes, so that they could review without us. Because this is taking a big chunk of time out of my regular biology class. Now, I happen to like biology, so that makes this waste of time even worse.

Not to mention that the OGT week schedule makes classes only 35 minutes long anyways. So we’re not learning a whole lot right now.

school, tests, biology, Ohio

So here is the product of my years of hating how school is taught. It’s called “Work or Play”. It made my mom laugh, so I can brag at least of that.

“I learned plenty of interesting information in eighth grade, which my teachers said was a time of preparation for high school. The most vital skill for high school, the teachers seemed to think, was being able to color pictures. Therefore, we wasted no time in preparing for our more difficult high school education. We colored maps in history. We colored picture books in French. We colored drawings of animals and fossils in science. At first, I was skeptical about how this was helping me for high school, especially since I hated this kindergarten-style treatment. However, when I started ninth grade, I realized that the ability to color pictures is actually useful. Even in high school, I find myself being treated like a little kid, and no matter what I do to stop it, nothing seems to work.

“Every week, some of my teachers find new ways to pretend that I am still in the first grade. In some classes, every chapter test must go hand-in-hand with a review game that the whole class must play, divided into the teams of primeval enmity: boys and girls. On days when teachers seem to have nothing left to teach, we play games such as bingo to ’study’, with prizes such as candy and colorful key chains. However, I do not complain too much, because it sometimes turns out to be a wonderful class period of nostalgia during which I fondly remember my days of preschool.

“No matter how ‘fun’ these activities may be, I realize that I must somehow prepare for the rigors of college, which does not ask for colored pictures in lieu of admittance essays. Starting in seventh grade, I took all of the honors classes I could because I thought I could escape coloring pictures and playing bingo. However, that reduced the problem only slightly, since seventh grade honors pre-algebra was a waste of time (even though it was a very ‘fun’ class). I also thought that high school would be more work and less play, but I was wrong, as my school planner testifies. Not participating in some of these activities is impossible, because my teachers remind me constantly that I must prepare for college and a future career by playing games with the class.

“Is there a solution to the problem that, according to the rest of the student body, does not even exist? I do not believe so. Of course, I could talk to some of my teachers to try to convince them that my classmates and I have let our carefree childhoods go and do not need to wallow in childhood memories in class every day, but this would cause disagreement with the other students. After all, I respect the fact that not all of my peers agree with my viewpoint that, unsurprisingly, we go to school to learn rather than play. The only possible solution to being treated like a six-year-old is simply going with the flow and ignoring the sudden urges to dash out of the classroom and to the nearest playground, which are natural side effects of this sort of education.

“Despite my lack of success at alleviating this problem, I remain optimistic. It could be worse, and there are times when I actually enjoy some of these activities. I feel certain that education will become harder and more serious in college. For now, I can only hope that when I have a college degree, am thirty years old, and am working in an office, my boss will not make me color pictures.”

School, English, Essays, Writing, Teachers, Games

This weekend, I’m writing an essay on what is probably the best essay topic I’ve ever received in English class. You’re supposed to describe, in detail, your worst pet peeve. I took this opportunity to write about school. It was hard for me to decide exactly what to write about, since there are so many things about school that annoy the hell out of me. I finally settled on writing about how we’re treated like little kids. More specifically, my thesis statement is “Even in high school, I find myself being treated like a little kid, and no matter what I do to stop it, nothing seems to work.”

I have no doubt that that’s going to change, since this is only my first draft. The thesis doesn’t even work very well. Doesn’t have any sarcasm. However, I can’t even write about this the way I want to. I can’t mention what classes this stuff happened in, because I know my English teacher would track down those teachers and tell them all about my wonderful essay. That would be…disastrous.

So I’m going to lose much of the interest in my paper because of this. Oh well. This is still the best essay topic I’ve had since 6th grade or so.

School, English, Essays, Writing, Teachers

An interesting event has just come to my attention…I read the story on Michelle Malkin’s blog about a teacher who ranted against George Bush, comparing him to Hitler and expressing his opinion that the United States is the most evil nation on Earth (obviously, he was anti-Iraq war as well).

Not only do I totally disagree with this guy (especially since I think he was being anti-Semitic), but I also disagree with his right to say that. I always complain that my teachers are too politically correct, but this is kind of the opposite extreme. And definetly more harmful than politically correct teachers. Who really don’t cause harm at all.

He did get suspended. Justice at last.

The scariest thing about that for me is…this guy was teaching a 10th grade class. It could have just as easily been my school. In my school, as in every school, wouldn’t there be people who would become swayed by a year of such indoctrination? Would someone decide to break school rules and record the teacher’s class on tape, like a student in this teacher’s class did?

Who knows. However, I hope you can see now why I think public schools suck. There needs to be some quality control. I get the impression they’re letting anybody off the street teach.