Robert Leverington

Today in mathematics one of my peers asked the teacher for assistance with the homework we had been set (see my previous post on this topic for background information on the website they force us to use). Near the end of the lesson,  she opened it up in her web browser and put it on the projector, then proceeded to go through it and explain how to do it. On just the second question she had to ask students in the class who had already attempted the exercise what the rounding was, to avoid getting it incorrect, and did not know what the software was expecting as an answer to the last question. This proves how badly authored the website is: if even the teacher cannot do the exercise the first time, how can we as pupils - inherently with less ability than her - be expected to spend our precious spare time doing it.

It was even mentioned to her, once again, by another person in my class that most of us would happily complete work out of a text book on paper; she replied with a sarcastic comment to the effect of “so you’re not just being lazy, this is what I have set and it is what you will do.” Quite frankly this abuse of responsibility is appalling, there is no reason maths teachers should be allowed have all the work done for her by a computer, it is also insulting to other teachers who spend many hours preparing and marking homework - even if all it consists of is photocopying or the like. I would be delighted if we could do it on paper instead, and believe that government intervention is needed.

Since starting this year of school, my final year of compulsory education, there has been a great increase in the amount of homework we have been receiving. Teachers who would give us virtually no homework last year have changed path and now give us it on a regular basis - those who did give out homework last year have stepped it up a gear. This is probably reasonable, given the restricted time available until our final exams in May, however I’m now struggling to keep up with this endless backlog, especially on top of a large amount of coursework that needs doing.

The most taxing segment that I am getting is, without a doubt, maths. Rather than providing exercises for us to do with pen and paper, we are instead instructed to use a website which the teacher can then monitor. This brings up a variety of points, most important in my opinion is that it reduces the level of student-teacher communication when difficulties in the task arise. With regular written assignments the pupil can go up to the teacher with a piece of paper in their hand, and the teacher can explain to them what has been done wrong; this is not really practical or very easy to do with virtual based learning.

Another factor that causes this difficulty is the software chosen. The website our school opted to use is, quite frankly, appalling. How they expect school students to use it effectively I just don’t know, and the frustration it causes is tormenting. From the moment you log on it is quite clear that it is unfinished, sometimes the links don’t work and the use of flash can be irritating at times. Doing the exercises is the largest difficulty, sometimes they round the “correct” answer without telling you and hence mark it wrong; and when you do make a silly mistake you are forced to do the entire exercise again, not simply the part that you got wrong. This can be extremely time consuming and gets tiresome after several attempts - especially with the longer questions.

The website being segregated in to separate learning and homework sections causes you to struggle when the solution is unclear, in normal text books an example would be given at the start of the section that you could study - but we don’t even get given text books. Instead the laborious process of navigating to the relevant section on the website is needed, often insufficient information is provided making certain sections almost impossible without significant dedication to the task at hand.

Overall I think this was a bad decision to make, and in fact shows up badly on the maths teachers who use it. At least in my school the majority of teachers spend a significant amount of time putting work together (even if it is just a few photocopies) and marking it, this tool allows them to check a few boxes on a website and give out detention for those who don’t complete the work. What makes this even more insulting is that our maths teacher expects us to cover the entire GCSE Statistics syllabus (a separate GCSE for the accelerated set) entirely online - with no class work except revision.

Yesterday marked the first day of the summer holidays. For quite a while I’ve been looking forward to them, while I used to enjoy school recently I’ve become highly demotivated and really wanted out (unfortunately that won’t be possible for another three years since there is really nowhere else to go other than sixth form); lessons are boring and slow, rules are enforced depending on how the teachers feel, and I’m seriously lacking any friends there - right now I just wish it could all be over and I could start working. The summer should be a break, where I can do what I like and stop worrying about homework for once; but, alas, this is not the case. Our English teacher is making us complete a piece of coursework and told us to e-mail it to her this Friday, one will also have to purchase and read To Kill a Mockingbird - also for English - and I have a tremendous amount of product design coursework to do because; via a majority decision between the product design teachers (our teacher disagreed, but the other two wanted to), the deadline was moved forward approximately five months meaning that a lot of the work will have to be done in my spare time. I never wanted to do product design anyway, I wanted to do electronics - but the system was confusing and all of the technology subjects were bundled into one “Product Design” class. Another factor is that I could probably spend all summer doing the product design, yet it will never be finished without teacher input, so another thing will be in the back of my mind.

I have plenty of other stuff to occupy myself with though, I’m working on a new computer program for password encryption and am going to Scotland and Ireland. So it’ll be fun, at least. Yesterday I and a couple of friends went up the hills near where we live and took some photographs (I’m trying to collect some photographs to use on my blog as a wallpaper), but only six were any good; I’ll need some more before being able to do it I suppose.

Sports day yesterday wasn’t as bad as I originally expected, there was much waiting around - but that seamed to go quickly (and the day was more fun than lessons, contrary to my expectations). I took part in the form relay, since the girl who was original going to didn’t want to so they needed someone else, and I think I did fairly well helping the team to catch up even though we had fallen badly behind due to our first runner (we ended up coming fourth out of six teams in the race we did). Members of my form also took part in the shot putt (where we got full points) and the long jump. We then went on to do orienteering, this isn’t a traditional sport and wasn’t the most fun thing I’d done all day - needless to say, cheating was easy, and we lost due to our teacher prohibiting us from cheating like the other groups did. We also did badminton and football (although the format of both could have been improved).

After lunch we went outside and sat on the bank of the field and watched the house track events, I ended up doing the tug of war since we had insufficient competitors and was pushed into doing it by some of the people in my house. We won the first go, but lost on the second one. I had a nice time overall, and lots of other people did too (except, of course, the kids who had a miserable outlook of the day and were unwilling to participate - but they were bound to still be unhappy no matter what).

Today we were told about the sports day being held this Wednesday, the format is drastically different to last years and I am disappointed to say the least. This year my school started using the vertical tutoring system where form groups had members from each year, designed to create a more cohesive atmosphere within the school (contradictorily split lunches were also introduced this year, so friends who are in separate years won’t necessarily have lunch together - I was also fairly annoyed regarding this change). Due to this change in the form pupil distribution houses were also introduced (these have not worked very well though, in my opinion), and this year play a fairly large role within sports day.

For the first four periods of the day forms will play as a team (just year nine and ten though, as year eleven are on study leave and sixth form cannot be made to participate) in four activities including dodgeball and football. They will be working to gain points for the house, used to generate a final ranking. I suspect that this will involve a fair amount of waiting around and generally be boring. In the afternoon there will then be one hour of individual and team events for those who want to participate (such as the 100m, relay and tug of war), if you do not want to take part the only other option is to sit and watch. There is no choice to just attend normal lessons, and if you do get a letter to say why you can’t participate one still has to where PE kit and watch. Another issue is that they want you to turn up to school in PE kit, this would be both uncomfortable and potentially embarrassing (especially for a number of other students who are not necessarily comfortable with their appearance).

On a different note the PE awards assembly recently took place, as expected the same people got all the awards. There is never an assembly to award the academically talented - not that I’d want one to take place - and it really feels as if the school doesn’t care about what happens in the classroom. The PE department is also allowed to punish you if you forget your kit, even though you took part in the activities anyway and were forced to wear old, dirty clothes instead; few other departments could get away with this.