Student Conferences Editorial by Maddie

 

            On Thursday, October 10th, WEMCHS will be having student conferences. You pick a time that you and your parent can come and discuss your work. You come in, get your portfolio, and sit down somewhere and talk about what’s in it. The purpose of the conference is so your parents can know what’s going on in your classes, and what you may need to work on. After you are done, you may pick up your report card and leave. But we must ask ourselves, is this really necessary?  

            For one thing, we get progress reports every three weeks to let our parents know how we are doing. Many teachers require us to get these signed, so there is no way your parents will not see it unless you forge their signature. The purpose of the conference and the progress reports are the same: to let your parents know about how you’re doing in school. The only difference is that the conference requires parents to take time out of their day, get off work, and come to school just to sit in a classroom for twenty minutes. Usually with progress reports, parents look at the grade and try to discuss them with the student. At the core, these two things are exactly alike, yet one is far easier than the other.

            Many parents have jobs, and can only have a certain amount of time off. Some parents will not be able to come to the conference, and others may not want to. School should not interfere with people’s personal lives. If one parent has to get off work to come do a student conference, it may prohibit them from getting off in the future if needed. Sure, it’s only a twenty minute conference, but add that to the time it will take to go home, pick up the student, and drive to WEMCHS and you may have a few hours.  

            Another point is, you cannot expect students to take these things seriously. There is a book of things we are required to do, and if you do not think some people are going to make a complete joke out of it, you are wrong. Some people may say “Oh but this is WEMCHS and all of our students are committed to learning, and will do everything they can to ensure a successful academic career”, but who are we kidding?   

            The idea of having student conferences is not awful, but it should be optional. Many people can’t take time out of their busy schedules to spend twenty minutes talking about something they would have seen on a progress report anyway, and others simply do not care. It’s really all on the student. It is not their parent’s problem if they are failing a class, it is their own. If we keep raising children to think that everybody is willing to help them, we will end up having an entire generation of people who cannot do anything for themselves. All in all, the student conferences are a complete waste of time.

 

 

joseph

Cuts Teachers Pay to Provide Laptops for Students

Mooresville Public schools in North Carolina is third in test scores and second in graduation rates. To reward them, Superintendent Mark Edwards is providing the students with laptops to 4,400 fourth through 12th grade students at five different schools. They are cutting teachers’ pay to use it as the funds for the laptops.

             In 2008 the students had received the laptops and at that time 73 percent of the students had tested proficiently in math, reading, and science. In 2011 it raised up to 89 percent while using the laptops that is an 11 percent increase. If more schools decide to do this they could have more students being successful, the only downside to this would be that teachers would get less money. Each year the school districts spend at least 7,415.89 dollars per year.

            This will result in a loss of 37 teaching jobs which will result in larger class sizes. District officials believe that this helps teachers manage their classes more efficiently. All of the student’s books, notes, learning materials and assignments are on the internet to allow them to reach it whenever they want. If a student doesn’t understand they subject, then they can email their teacher in order to contact them while at home, or review the subject again to try and see if they understand this time. This will also allow students to learn at different rates so everyone is always working on something.

            This allows everyone to be better informed even the teachers and parents about what is happening in class and what the student’s grades are. Parents will be able to make sure that their students are up to date with the work that they have been doing. I believe that this is a good idea and should be applied to other schools as well.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/16/north-carolina-school-dis_n_1791956.html

 

 

 

 

Jairic Moses,

Current Events,

Breshears, 9/27/2013

 

Current Event

 

Fox, Andy “Boys punished for firing air soft guns” http://www.wavy.com/news/local/va-beach/has-zero-tolerance-gone-too-far, 9/23 /2013

Three Virginia Beach seventh graders have been suspended for firing air soft guns.

Tuesday September, 24 three boys, Aidan Clark, Khalid Caraballo, and a third boy whose name has not been released were given long term suspensions. The suspensions will last until June but a hearing will be held in January to see if the boys will be allowed back into school any sooner. At first the students were thought to be expelled, but after looking into the official document it was found that they were suspended long term and not expelled.

The student’s parents were annoyed that the school could be so ignorant. Khalid’s mother thinks it is ridiculous that her son and his friends were suspended for firing a spring loaded airsoft gun on their private property. Khalid’s mother stated “My son is my private property”.

I think the whole situation is ignorant. The school has no right to suspend any student for what they do outside of school. The situation is even worse when you add in the fact that they were on private property and 70 yards away from the bus stop in question.