Going through New Trier competition has always been huge. The thing is New Trier likes to claim they "don't care". Teachers all focus on how grades "don't matter, only learning does". And this all may be true, but do students really listen? Of course not. The obvious wondering question here would be, why? Why don't students listen to this? Yet, being a student myself I know how others feel. It's not the fact that Oh well my teachers say all they care about is learning so if I do bad on a test it's ok! It's more the pressure of the common dialogue heard at NT.
Student #1: "Oh my gawd, that test was SO hard. I did SO bad. What did you get?"
Student #2: "Ugg, it's bad, a 78%"
Student #1: "Oh well I got a 93% but I swear we never learned that one question!"
Now that student #2 has heard that "doing bad" for student #1 is an A- he/she is now thinking to himself/herself that they are doing horribly and they have to do much better, even if it was just one test. This affects everyone. I won't lie, I feel pressured by my peers to do well. Teachers constantly tell you not to share your grades, but no one listens, they either want to brag about how good theur score was or surprisingly how bad it was.
There is also the college factor. ACT and SAT scores, where people are applying or have gotten in to college, and their extracurriculars flying though the hallways like it's everyone's business. And people purposfully make it that wat. Once it's out there, the competition is at a high.
In my opinion I feel that New Trier just needs to accept the fact that they are a competitive built school. Some teachers don't allow kids to see what grade they got on a paper, many don't give out progress reports, and some jsut plain ignore grades all together, driving some kids bazookas. I feel if New Trier just ignored the "grades don't matter" policy it would actually stress kids out less. In my experience not knowing what grade I got on something because a teacher wouldn't tell me has actually stressed me out much more, not less. Kids should get a choice on whether they want to know their grades or not at any point in time.
Your thoughts?
I agree, New Trier is a very, very competitive place. But, I wonder, will having access to my grades at any given time make us go even more crazy? At my middle school, parents had online access to our grades at any given time. I took the letter out of the mail with the password and username and kept it for myself, too scared to let my parents see. My parents knew about the system, but didn't really care enough to see it. They knew me and my brother weren't failing anything, and they didn't want to pressure us to get that A+ because they actually believe in the "learning matters, grades don't" concept. Instead, I was the one constantly monitoring my grades. I was satisfied with my grade slightly increasing, but being able to see a .4% decrease in a class would cause a great deal of stress. I thought if my grade was going down then, it'd be low as can be when report cards came around. Maybe teachers should give you a grade print out after tests, but I don't think we should be allowed to see our grades 24/7.
ReplyDeleteI see. That makes sense. The reason I think it should be allowed is because some parents DO need to monitor their children's grades. My friend's brother has had some issues and knowing what grade he is getting is essential to helping him find more help. Last year he never knew and almost failed 2 classes unknowingly. Seeing them 24/7 might not be good but I think kids should have the choice too either way. Or at least parents should.
ReplyDeleteI feel like this is a case-specific question. Like Sarah said... I feel like being able to see my grades 24/7 would stress me out and my parents are pretty much the same way; they care about grades, but it's not everything. However, sam has a good point. For some parents being able to see their kid's grades would be very beneficial.
ReplyDeleteIn junior high we had the same sort of online grading system where you check your grades for every class at every time of the day. I thought this to be very helpful because I would check it a couple times a week so come the end of the quarter, there were no surprises or last minute extra credit pleas. So in that way I found it to be very useful.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that New Trier is an extremely competitive school, even though some people may deny it. It's those little things like Samantha's fake conversation in her blog that drives such competition between students. People may not realize it, but it's definitely there. That's why applying for colleges is an extreme competition between NT students because basically everyone is qualified to get into top colleges, it's just a matter of who will get in, and I almost feel like it's the luck of the draw.