At the beginning of November, I left 11th grade at Stuyvesant High School, and started homeschooling myself. One of the primary benefits of homeschooling is that it freed me to select my courses of study. Had I stayed at Stuyvesant, this year I would have taken American Literature, Spanish 3, US History, Health, Regents Physics,… Continue reading Exceeding Expectations: How I Chose My Homeschooling Classes
Two Mondays ago I began to homeschool myself in lieu of completing my tenure as a Stuyvesant High School student. There are many reasons I did this, including greater educational and temporal freedom, but it is important that I share not only why, but also how I homeschool, so that others may find it easier… Continue reading From Stuyvesant HS to Homeschooling in One Marking Period
Distance learning is an opportunity. Many teachers are frustrated that all the work they’ve done, which was preparing to teach students in a classroom, is now irrelevant. I suggest they mourn the loss and move on. If they try to continue to hold on to their old methods, the ghost of the classroom will haunt… Continue reading 3 Things Teachers Need to Let go of For Distance Learning to Work
While online school is wonderful overall, there are still some issues with it. I’m not talking about technical or logistical concerns. Those are all fairly straightforward to fix. I’m talking about those issues which will take more time, flexibility, and cooperation on both the students’ and teachers’ parts if we wish to make the transition… Continue reading What Still Needs Work: An NYC Student’s Take On the Problems With Online Learning
I, like many of my fellow students in New York City, have been doing school online for over a week now. Online school is preferable to in-school school for many reasons, a few of which I will explain here: YouTube > Teachers Many of my teachers have assigned YouTube videos as part of daily lessons… Continue reading Pausing My Teacher: An NYC Student’s Take On the Pros of Remote Learning
School is what you do before the “real world.” It isn’t supposed to prepare you for the real world, it’s supposed to give you a place to prepare yourself for the real world. As it stands today, it is failing far too many students as evidenced by the proliferation of private tutors, the prevalence of… Continue reading The Broken Feedback Loop: Failing to Prepare Students Prepares Them to Fail
In software development, there is a system called test-driven development or TDD. It’s a five-step process that gets repeated until a finished product is obtained. Its core mechanic consists of writing tests to check if your software works before you write the software, and when you write the software, you write it just to pass… Continue reading Can This Software Development Process Be the Key to Raising Standards at All Schools?
The New York City Department of Education’s AP for All initiative “aims to ensure that by fall 2021, students at all high schools will have access to at least five AP classes.” AP for All is part of the DOE’s Equity and Excellence for All agenda, run by the Office of Equity and Access, whose… Continue reading How the College Board Siphons Public Funds and Profits off Student Failure with AP Courses
If you are currently in high school in NYC, your school probably offers AP courses. You may know that they are “advanced” classes, with a final comprehensive test at the end, and you were probably told that you can earn college credit for taking them. If you’re a good student who wants to save some… Continue reading 4 Things High School Students MUST Know Before Signing Up For AP Classes
As covered in Part #1, two weeks ago was the New York City Department of Education’s CSEdWeek, which is an extension of their CS4All initiative that they claim “will ensure all NYC public school students learn computer science” and help students develop “computational thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and critical-thinking skills.“ There are a few issues with… Continue reading What Is Computer Science? The DOE Doesn’t Know: CS4All (Part 2)
