English Expectations

Our discussion in 3rd period really got me thinking. Everyone is complaining but nobody has suggestions that could help improve the class to better everyone involved. Mr. Marshall even said he wants feedback in writing instead of a mass of people attacking him which I think is extremely reasonable. For our first blog, I think it's fitting that I talk about the frustrations everyone is feeling and how we might change them.



Since the first few days of school, I had a feeling pre-AP world lit would be an extremely overwhelming class. I was right. I know to block out at least an hour or two for english homework each day we have class. I think being a pre-AP class, the class should be challenging and should prepare us for AP classes. On the other hand, it's not an AP class yet; it should be preparatory, not exemplary of what an AP class is. I am in AP human geo right now and that is an actual AP class. I have homework in that class every night and it's challenging, however it is not so much that it's impossible to finish the assignment to the best of my ability. Understanding the need for a challenge and the demand for a fast pace in the class, I think taking everything a little slower might be beneficial. Looking at both sides of the problem, I see Mr. Marshall is assigning the many readings and journals/writings we do for homework to help us practice good writing/reading habits. On the other hand, the class is feeling like they are random assignments that take a significant amount of time and aren't helping us all that much. Personally, I'm doing the assignments just to get them done and not to really get something out of them. It's not that I don't want to get something out of them just that I don't have enough time to do the actual assignment and then really delve into it and understand the deeper meaning. If we stretch out the assignments and really discussed them thoroughly, we might be able to get more out of the assignments.



Along with that, I find many of the assignments to be random. When I say random, I mean very disconnected from whatever else we are doing in class. I feel as though we need a main unit, and for all of the assignments to relate to that unit. For example, I guess you could say our current, main unit is Oedipus Rex. I can understand most of the stuff we've been doing in class (research projects, performing parts of the play, etc.) and some of the homework assignments (Tragedy vs. comedy reading). However, we suddenly break off into this summary/response on a random piece of writing. It's not so much the assignment I'm frustrated with, it's the relevance of the assignments to what we're doing in class. I understand that we should have to think about the connection between everything but when everything is so different from one another, it's nearly impossible to come up with a connection. If our assignments could all be correlated with the main "unit" in the class, I think it might clear a lot of things up.



I talked individually to a couple people and everyone I talked to, including some seniors, felt the same way. "I think we need less unecessary homework, less pointless page-long reports that don't get read, more meaningful assignments, and more clarity on what we are doing. I don't even understand what the homework is half the time and I always ask people later because when I ask Mr. Marshall, he doesn't explain it to me." Obviously, I am not the only one feeling this way. After talking to several seniors, I recieved similar responses. "We kind of have to push Mr. Marshall for info. I don't think he gets across what we are doing in class clearly enough for us to understand." After all the feedback, I think a majority of the students in both the sophomore classes and the senior class have similar concerns.



In general, I think everyone feels like the class is disorganized altogether. There is so little structure in the class, it's hard for anyone to be motivated to strive for excellence. I can understand having some flexibility in the class for creativity, but currently I feel there is too little structure which causes confusion. A very easy change that could help clear some things up is organizing the 'notes' on the board. I think it would help if there was a column with what we are doing in class each day and another column with homework each day. Also, it would really help if we could either have a student write everything on the board or type it up. (Posting it on blackboard would really help as well.) This would definately add some clarity to the class and would be the first step to helping create a class deemed as beneficial by teacher and students alike.