Dear Kent School District Administrators,
We are a group of students from the Kent-Meridian High School Technology Academy; we’d like to start off by thanking you for providing this amazing program to us. We have gained much knowledge and work experience through our teacher’s methods. Every teacher in the Technology Academy was an amazing choice on your part. These teachers are all elite in their confidence and their goal’s are not just to teach us, but to prepare us for the rest of our lives. Us, as a group are only about 10 people large, we came up with the idea of writing this letter to you while the majority of our classmates were at an “inspirational” assembly to get back on track to graduate.
For some of us this is our first year, others our third. While we sat in our advisory having a discussion about the Technology Academy, we realized that the program was no where near close to perfection, which is to be expected. However we did think of some things that may improve the Technology Academy as a whole.
Many students in the technology academy take it for granted, using the technology as means to chat, or check e-mail during class. Teachers are not always able to catch the students as they do it, but we don’t believe that punishment is effective enough to stop this behavior from continuing. Other students, while not using the technology inappropriately, complain about the “too much” work we receive, while others are able to manage their time wisely and get their work done on time. We believe it is because not everyone is meant for the Technology Academy. Because we use projects to show our learning we spend much time working in groups, and these projects require a sense of time management, technical ability, and openness to new ways of learning.
For the success of the technology academy in the future, we suggest the following resolutions:
Taking scheduled blocks of time out of class/advisory to meet as a whole academy and work on skills that are needed for the future
Having community members give advice for different job fields
Having teacher/student led workshops and seminars on different aspects of learning, to share the knowledge that is contained in our academy
Using a screening process to decide who gets in
Similar to getting into college, having either a multimedia resume, or creating a project based on a topic given during an informational night
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We believe that these scheduled blocks would have a positive impact on the academy and help our students succeed through school and in life.
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A student judged screening process would be affective in making sure we get people that believe in the technology academy and know what they are getting into before giving a one-year long commitment to something that not everyone can handle.
(Elaborate?)
We thank you for reading our letter and (add something else here?)
1 comment:
I honestly love the letter so far. you should also include how all students of 7-9th grade are recieving a laptop and not only abusing the laptop abilities, however, the knowledge that the laptop gives. It's all so vague to me. if they think that there should be a laptop for everyone, why in the hell is there a freaking tech academy? Hartley and Christiansen should revise this. I know Hartley will put a little flavor and Christiansen will add his salt. (:
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