The Start Of A Deficient Year

After 8th grade where it is the end of middle school and the beginning of a new stage of education, a new program was introduced to the upcoming Freshman. The program is different from regular school. The setting was going to take place at the 4H camp, or also known as the Telstar Freshman Academy (TFA for short). Before the end of the school year, a presentation was shown for students so they can understand what the new program was going to bring for the students education.

After the presentation, a few students put together a petition that ensures the following students didn’t want to take this route for their education. Most, if not all 8th-grade students signed the petition without hesitation. Unfortunately, the petition was ineffective which resulted in the Freshman going to the camp.

Since graduating in 2019 (the year I graduated), the opinion of many seniors agrees that 9th grade was the worst school year out of the entire four years of High School. The question for people reading is this: why was this titled the worst school year? According to multiple accounts from graduates, there were numerous problems with the program. These accounts were recorded on a document passed around on Google docs.

The length of said document is approx. 25 pages long with a whole list of concerns from students, some short while others are more in-depth. Keep in mind that this document was made because teachers WANTED to know what the concerns are of the students and how to improve the program. Even with aforementioned petition and this document that was presented at the school board meeting, the program never changed or took in the considerations. In fact, here is a direct quote from the document:

“The TFA teachers have given us an opportunity to give them feedback and concerns.”

The first sentence written by a student that the teachers wanted to hear the concerns about the program.

For privacy reasons, this essay will leave out the names of both students and teachers and will only focus on the major concerns that made this year the worst for the graduates. Also, this is not meant as a personal attack on the school I went to (Telstar) or TFA in general. In fact, they might’ve changed their ways and the current Freshman might have better experiences than the graduates. On the other hand, if the program is the same, then it is essential to address the problems at hand and to spread the word. Without further ado, let us get on with the worst high school year.

The Two Major Elephants In The Room:

When using the expression “the elephant in the room,” it discusses the certain controversies that are in a certain business or entertainment. In the case of Freshman year, two MAJOR controversies sparked during the program. One of the controversies deals with the credits and the two new classes that were introduced in the program.

As you know, there is a certain milestone of credits that every student needs to reach before graduating. The amount of credits varies within states. Both the school and the camp is located in Maine. According to the state of Maine, you need a total of 22.5 in credits including sixty hours of community service (doing volunteer work for the community). To add to this further, here is a screenshot that was taken to show you how many credits each student needs in order to get a High School Diploma.

As evidence, the main subjects are Math, Science, History, and LA need four credits in order to graduate while other subjects like art, health, and gym need half or one credit. So at the TFA, there were four classes in total. However, only two counted as credits (that being Science and LA). The other two classes at TFA had NO GRADING categories and were not approved by the state of Maine. Therefore, they didn’t count as credits.

Because of the lack of the grading categories for both of these classes, it caused a major stir within the Freshman because the Freshman would have to make up the credits that weren’t involved in the TFA in the other grades of High School (that being History and Math). For you to understand this further, here is my personal experience with this controversy.

The TFA omitted a math class from the program. Because of that, I had to take a math class after we finished our day at 4H (we only stayed at 4H for half of the school day). This is where I took Algebra at Telstar. Now let us say that 4H DID have a math class. If they did then I would be able to take gym during my Freshman year after my day of 4H was done. I would have half credit for gym and then when sophomore year came around, I can sign up for gym again so I can receive full credit. Therefore, I can choose more electives in my Junior and Senior year.

However, since this was not the case, I had to take gym sophomore and junior year, so I didn’t have the chance to choose the electives I wanted. I have a particular interest in science-based electives, so I would’ve taken the opportunity to sign up for some if I didn’t have to take gym TWICE. Another problem with this controversy was that this prevented some students from getting HONOR ROLL, which should be a major red flag that the program is flawed 🚩.

Besides this controversy, there is another one that stirred within TFA. This problem surrounds teamwork and why it was hypocritical that such a topic that was taught at TFA didn’t hold up to improving the program. We had a class dedicated to teamwork and how students can refine that skill. As an example of teamwork, we had to demonstrate it when it came to the wall challenge. There are two sides to the wall: one had a ledge where you can step on. The students were split into groups and went on either side of the wall. One side pushed a student up over the wall while the other side grabs hold of the student and put them on the ledge.

You might be thinking that the last paragraph is stating teamwork is unhelpful. In no way it isn’t, in fact, teamwork has two major factors that actually assists from a business standpoint:

• It gets the job done quickly and efficiently
• You build relationships with your employees
• As a team, you create something that will be effective for consumers

So no, teamwork is not ineffective. However, this doesn’t excuse the hypocrisy of teamwork that happened in this program. The hypocrisy begins when students raised their concerns about the program either vocally or written on the document were ignored by the school board and teachers alike. This not only shows that the school board is not willing to take criticism, but also that they don’t show teamwork. If the teachers were on the same page as students, then the program wouldn’t receive as much animosity from students.

The program taught us about teamwork for a good month, so why not show it? If you want to know how we could’ve showed teamwork, we should change this program AS A TEAM. Both students and teachers should’ve worked together to make this program more tolerable. Also, if I was in a position as a teacher, I would listen to my students concerns because, as a teacher, it’s a RESPONSIBILITY to make a fun, enjoyable class for students.

Personal Gripes With 4H:

On the document, I had about one major concern. This concern is mostly about what the program should’ve been (and should be since this program is still taking effect at Telstar). Let me begin by telling you what I initially thought this program was going to be like. When I first heard about this program, I imagined that it was going to be different than regular school.

I wouldn’t say different as in teaching us stuff that is irrelevant to our credits, but different in what we want to learn about. I remember one particular moment at the end of 8th grade. It was a semi-final field trip of the year where each student received a document with different subjects listed alphabetically. At the time, I was interested in animals, so I chose that topic.

When it was the day of our field trip, I went to three places (let me not forget to mention that one of these places was 4H) and I had the opportunity to see animals I would never dream of seeing in my state such as a tarantula and emus. The field trip was amazing but after the trip I thought to myself: “is this what we will be learning at the program?” If this question came true, then that would mean I would learn anything about animals.

So with that being said, I was excited about this program. Unfortunately, this question was rejected immensely when I went through freshman year. The major problem that I, among other students had, was the repetition of topics. Most, if not all topics, were things we learned back in previous grades.

To show you some evidence, here is a screenshot of what discoveries I made about tectonic plates (something we learned back in 6th grade) and Government (something we learned back in 8th grade).

My views on repetition of topics throughout the grades are negative. Personally to me, it should be taught only once and that’s it. There are wide variety of topics in each of the subjects, we don’t need to learn the same things over and over. Another negative factor of this program is that we did TOO MANY PROJECTS. But this isn’t the biggest reason why I was disappointed with the program.

Like many graduates, I hated this program. Freshman year felt more like a review due to the repeated topics we learned about. I think that it was pointless to go to a program that doesn’t teach us anything new. I do think, however, this program has potential to be good if it was I originally thought it was going to be. Let’s go back to the semi-last field trip. My topic was animals.

Now let us use animals and incorporate them into the four subjects:

Science is essential for animals, especially when you want to get a career with animals (like a vet or a zoologist).

For history, it could be about dinosaurs or the history of tools in agriculture (as examples).

LA could’ve been about books about animals and report about one of the books.

Math should be where you construct something (like a rabbit hutch).

These are just some of the many examples I can give for the topic I’m interested in. All in all, it was WASTED POTENTIAL for me and others. I’m going to assume the reason why this didn’t work was that it may be too much or we wouldn’t receive credits, but we already have two classes that DON’T COUNT as credits

This is just my concern with the program, but there are plenty more concerns to mention in this article that I would like to point out in this article. These concerns are from other graduates.

Right To The Gripes:

Self-Discovery Class

By definition, self-discovery is where a person takes a personal journey where they discover themselves without the aid of peers, family, friends, etc. Taking a self-discovery journey is not a bad idea. It is beneficial for anyone who wants to discover things they never thought they could do.

We took a self-discovery class during the TFA. This class wouldn’t be that bad if it was limited to two weeks rather than months. Another problem with this class is that many students (including me) found it to be useless and a waste of time.

Why did so many students find this to be a waste of time? I believe it lies between the grading category and our age at the time. We were either 15-16, so we would be able to discover things about ourselves and that this is one of the classes that didn’t count as credits. With all of this, this is the first major gripe many students had with this program.

Project-Based Learning

To go more in-depth about the projects, let me discuss the learning style of this program. The program mostly focused on this form of learning. Project-based learning is pretty much described in the name: this type of learning requires students to do projects individually or in groups.

For most projects, we did it in groups. There are a few projects I remember doing, but there is one I enjoyed the most. This one requires students to make something that hasn’t been produced yet. In smaller terms, we are making an invention. The invention that me and my partner created was a teddy bear that had a picture of a family in the middle of its stomach. The target demographic for the bear was for cancer patients.

To understand a little more about this project, here is a little excerpt of the problem statement (what problem are we going to solve with our invention) discussing the purpose of the bear and what it does. This project, in my honest view, wasn’t bad. I learned how to sew and create a stuffed animal.

However, during our time at this program, we did TOO MUCH of these projects. Because of this, several students didn’t learn much doing these projects. If we were going from a learning perspective, students learn things differently compared to others. There might be some students who do learn from doing projects while there are others who don’t learn much. Personally, my learning style is visual, especially when it comes to topics like Math.

Doing a few projects is fine, but doing too many can be stressful and can be a waste of time.

Standing In A Circle Twice A Day

At the time of the document was shared, I didn’t put my name on this concern, however, thinking back now, the circle time wasn’t needed. For one, why did we have circle time at the beginning of the day? As much as it is still a waste of time, at least it made a little more sense to have circle time at the the end of the day because we can share what we did during our day at 4H. In fact, why have circle time at all? If you never been to 4H, it is a summer camp which kind of explains the circle time, but even with this, we shouldn’t be standing in a circle considering were starting High School, not Kindergarten.

Some Of The Teachers Behavior

As you know, teachers are supposed to be civil and kind to students even if the students are misbehaving. However, there are times where the teacher was disrespectful to the students to the point they don’t act like their age. There are two events that I can recall where the teachers stooped as low as the students.

Both of these events took place during our inventions unit. The first incident took place when we were assigned a project with a partner. The project consists of the group picking up two cards and then from there, they created a made-up invention with those cards. To understand this more, let me use the cards me and my partner had. One card had a squirrel on it while the other had an acorn on it. We had to incorporate these two things for our invention. To present our product, we can make a video, presentation, poster, etc. Me and my partner created a video presenting our product.

The incident happened on the day to present our invention. Everyone presented their project except one group who were the last to present. The group said they weren’t ready to present and rather than receiving consequences like any other student, the teacher decided to give the group another day to get their project ready.

This is where students were TREMENDOUSLY upset due to the fact that if they weren’t ready, they wouldn’t get an extra day. The teacher then proceeded to call the entire class ASSHOLES.

This event capitalized on the hypocrisy of school in general because when this event happened and students raised awareness about it, NOTHING WAS DONE to the teacher. No consequences or apologies were given. If a student said a swear word towards a student, teacher, principal, faculty, etc. we would be in serious trouble, so how is a teacher any different?

The second incident happened during the same unit but in a different class. For some reason, the teacher blurted out that they can name 100 things about a student THEY DON’T LIKE. There was no rhyme or reason for the teacher to say this. To be honest, I would like a teacher to do that to me. Let me hear the things they don’t like about me and make sure they get up to 100. According to my family, friends, acquaintances, etc., they like me and my personality (I know not everyone will like me).

These are the two personal experiences I had with the teacher’s bad behavior. There are other moments that I didn’t experience but other students experienced which include:

• Teachers telling students to shut their mouths
• Starting irrelevant arguments with students
• Checking students private profiles (though I don’t know the full context of this)

Among other incidents. All in all, it was unacceptable for teachers to act like this, considering they’re supposed to be role models for kids/teens.

Behavioral Referral Sheets

If you are wondering how students get punished when they are misbehaving when they are at 4H since we don’t have a higher-up, we had something known as behavioral referral sheets. What are these sheets? Let us picture a scenario where a student is disrupting the class. The teacher warns the student that they need to stop. However, the student doesn’t heed this warning and continues to be disruptive.

You might think that the teacher will give a final warning to students that if they don’t stop, they will call their parents, but that’s not the case. The teachers pass out a behavioral referral sheet: a sheet where the student needs to write a couple of sentences stating what they did wrong and how they can fix their behavior.

This method of punishment is not up-to-par compared to other punishments or consequences. Filling out a few sentences about what the student did wrong and how they can improve WILL NOT stop them from being disruptive. They can still portray this type of behavior even after writing down why their actions were wrong. There are other effective methods for punishing students that they should’ve used instead.

I hate to break it to you, but handing out a sheet where the student has to fill a few sentences IS NOT GOING TO CHANGE THEIR BEHAVIOR! The student can still be misbehaving, disruptive, distracting, etc. If you want to discipline a student, you could always call the students parents or something better than these sheets.

WALKING BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THE BARN AND THE LODGE

Another important aspect to understand about the 4H camp is the layout. There are two major buildings that 4H has on campus: the barn and the lodge. These two buildings are FAR APART from each other, therefore, walking between these two main buildings is a chore, especially if you start at the barn.

You might be wondering which one you start first. It all depends on where you went yesterday. To understand this further, let me say I started at the barn yesterday. So, for today, I would be going to the lodge, then go to the barn once I finished my classes at the lodge. Its like a pattern.

As mentioned in the last statement of the first paragraph, if you are starting at the lodge first and then going to the barn, you don’t have to take a long trek for circle time due to circle time being at the barn. But, let us reverse this for students who start at the barn. They have to start at the barn, walk to the lodge, and then have to WALK BACK to the barn to have circle time. A lot of students found this to be a waste of time.

It gets even worse when they made us walk through blizzards. However, unlike all of the other problems, this one got resolved as we stayed either in the barn or at the school.

The Hypocrisy Of Study Hall

Little known fact about me is that I was a special-ed student (especially with Math). I have a learning disability with Math, therefore, I needed a study hall. Study hall was mostly used for Math work that I’m stuck on, but also for other work as well.

The problem with the study hall was the lack of it for other students who were not special-ed. According to some students, the reason why there wasn’t one for non-special-ed students is that the principal said that it wasn’t an elective for freshmen. This wasn’t true because I had a study hall during my freshman year.

Being a special-ed student myself, this doesn’t seem right that I get a study hall while the other students don’t. It is completely unfair. A lot of students suggested that one of the two classes that didn’t count towards graduation turn into a study hall. Nevertheless, this never happened because the program came with two inexcusable excuses: “20 percent of students don’t do their work” and “we will waste time.”

These two excuses are unjustifiable for several reasons. First, we already WASTE TIME with this whole program. The circle time, walking back and forth between buildings, the ride and back from the school and 4H, the two classes that don’t count as credits, among other reasons show that this program is not worth it. Second, it is the student’s FAULT if they slack off and do not get their work done. Also, not every student is going to slack off. MANY students want to complete school fully and earn their High School degree. Not having a study hall pushes them further back from getting anything done.

Third, students don’t have the time to do work. They have a life outside of school. Fourth and lastly, as I mentioned previously in the third paragraph, it’s HYPOCRITICAL and UNFAIR that special-ed students get a study hall while others don’t. Hate to break it to you, but just because students are not special-ed, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a study hall. They can be stressed with work as much as special-ed students.

The AP Catastrophe

If you are unfamiliar with AP courses, there are essentially pre-college courses you can take in High School. You can take AP courses in any of your High School years. I always wanted to take an AP course, but I never had an opportunity to take one. I should’ve been able to take one during my freshman year, but that never happened either.

What makes this strange is that they had a spokesperson come in to talk to us about college. My question is this: why have a spokesperson talk to us about college if we don’t have pre-college electives? Even the spokesperson said this program is flawed due to the lack of AP courses. Additionally, other schools in the US have AP courses for freshman, so why not us?

Too Much Work On Technology

I don’t want to be one of those people who complain about technology. There are too many people who already have an extensive hate towards technology that I don’t share. My job and the future will rely on technology. However, most work we did at 4H was on technology, particularly LA (two-column journals, research papers, essays, and Of Mice and Men work are just some of the LA work that was done electronically. Other work that wasn’t LA include 4H program project, some Science work, among others.

Now, I don’t mind doing some work on technology, however, doing TOO MUCH of it causes physiological stress over time. Because of this, many PARENTS were concerned about their child being on the computer all of the time. Also, this is a major reason why so many students wanted a study hall. I also felt that we should do more lab work in Science, though I vaguely remember what we learned.

Students don’t have to time to do this extensive work, which is why homework should be eliminated from school. Here is a short slideshow of the things we learned about during our time of the program (there is more that is not included on the slideshow):

Being Graded On Respect, Responsibility, and Perseverance

A lot of students (including my vote) think this was very odd for the program to grade us on. As far as I’m concerned, teachers are not my flesh and blood. It’s the parent’s RESONSIBILITY to teach their child to be respectful to those who are respectful to them and show responsibility for both actions and work. Here is the evidence to show that this is real:

Backtracking to the teacher’s behavior, who are they to grade us on respect if they called an entire class ASSHOLES or naming things THEY DON’T LIKE ABOUT US? If you are disrespecting students, then you won’t receive any respect from me.

THE IMMENSE AMOUNT OF MONEY SPENT TRANSPORTING US

On the document, a student was able to do the correct Math on how much the school is wasting in transporting us from the school to 4H. While the number is not as big as the pin-pad things that were installed in the cafeteria (according to rumors, the school paid $14,000 to install those things, though this is just a rumor. There are, however, machines), the waste of money on something as useless is not a good idea. Here is the breakdown of the Math:

School buses get around 10 miles per gallon. The trip to my school and 4-H and back is 14.4 miles. So from that, they used 1.4 gallons of gas per trip. In Maine, we have 175 days of school and since we go back and forth these two places, the gallons of gas would be 245.

The bus doesn’t wait for us (so yes, the bus would pick us up from school and drop us to 4-H, then HEAD BACK to the school until our day was done at 4-H. It will then pick us up at 4-H to drop us back at the school). Buses use diesel gas which costs $3 per gallon. If the bus WAITED AROUND at 4H, it would be $735, but since this isn’t the case, we DOUBLE this number to $1,470.

The ride between the school and 4-H takes about 10 minutes. We quadruple this number to 40 minutes per day. Times 40 by 175 it would be 7,000 minutes or approx. 117 hours. The school then has to pay the bus driver. The minimum wage is $7.50 per hour which is $877.50 in labor cost.

In total, the school wasted $2,500 on transporting us from the school to 4-H.

My huge concern with this is this: why waste this much money on something so worthless? This program isn’t teaching us anything new including ALL OF THE OTHER THINGS mentioned in this essay.

PARENTS CONCERNS OF THE PROGRAM

Not only did students have major concerns for the program, but once parents heard from their kids about what was happening in this program, they rebelled against it as well. Parents felt that they shouldn’t be paying school taxes that is providing a program that doesn’t enhance our education.

These are just several of the many concerns that other students had with this program that I agreed with. After all of these negative things, there are some redeeming qualities of the program I like to put here, even though the pros and cons don’t balance out.

Redeeming Qualities of The 4-H Camp

After the negatives, there are some positives that I will give this program.

• THE RULES. Unlike the school’s rules, we had some freedom like wearing hats or calling teachers by their first names.
• THE BREAK TIME. The school doesn’t have this (unless you consider lunchtime). During the nice weather, we were able to play outside or do whatever we wanted to do.
• NOT ALL OF THE TEACHERS WERE BAD. My favorite teachers during 4H were the LA and Science teachers.
• SOME PROJECTS WE DID WERE FUN/INTERESTING. I liked the teddy bear project that me and my partner did.
• FIELD TRIPS WERE FUN AS WELL. One that I remember going to was the windmills (though I don’t remember where). I have never been close to a windmill until this program.

These were just some of the positive impacts of the program that I enjoyed. So I will say that not everything was bad in this program.

Conclusion:

To sum up this essay, the program itself was a disappointment. The sad thing is that I feel this program could work if teachers, school board, and the principal took in our concerns and, as mentioned in the “Elephant In The Room” section, they worked with the students AS A TEAM to make this program better. The school board told us we can address our concerns in the document and set up a meeting to share our concerns, but it didn’t fix anything. What’s the whole point of these meetings if you aren’t going to take the concerns into consideration and not going to listen to the students receiving your education?

The program should’ve differentiated from regular school by teaching either different subjecs or letting us pick what we want to learn about. Everything we learned at this program was the same in former grades, so why teach something valuable like home education? As far as I’m concerned, home education isn’t something you can learn in regular school. Plus, if we DID have the option to pick what we want to learn about, not only do students get the satisfaction in learning something they want to know, but the program wouldn’t be filler.

The treatment of students and the MAJOR HYPOCRISY also killed the program. I understand teens can have attitudes towards teachers, but even then, the teacher should be civil enough to deal with teens like that. Also, I don’t believe teens are rude to someone without a reason. Between the study hall, the teamwork, wasting time, the respect grading, and teachers swearing at students were the biggest reasons why so many (including me) loathe the program.

After all of this, I want to mention that this isn’t meant to slander or degrade the program. As I said in the beginning section, the program might’ve changed throughout the years and I don’t know other students experiences. Their experience might be better than mine. Also, I’m not speaking for ALL graduates. There might be a small minority who liked the program.

However, if these problems are still persisting at the program, then it is advised to spread the word. The only way to fix things is to spread these type of messages and hopefully they will make change. This isn’t just for the school I went to, but other schools in the US as well.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for other essays by entering your email, it means a lot to me!