So a lot of my ideas come from newspaper articles that bring things to my attention. This one came to me over the summer and it's about Louisiana public schools. I don't know if you all know this, but Louisiana has pretty awful public schools. I mean really on this grading system the BESE board does, in East Baton Rouge Parish alone for 2009-2010 7 schools received an F, 13 received a D, 4 received a C, 3 received a B, and ONE received an A! The grades are based off of 10% student attendance and 90% assessment of the students. So I began to formulate this plan I titled Project Think! and the slogan was, "There are no right or wrong answers. Just think." I was still working on the idea of it, but I started with formulating a survey for public school kids. I had a theory that the school environment and the parents had a big role in the students failure, although my question to answer was still "Why are these kids/schools failing?". If the students fail, the school fails, so in order for the school to succeed and get above a D, the students have to care about their success as well as the school's. Some of the questions in my survey were:
1. How often do you do homework?
2. My hobbies are:
3. I look forward to coming to school because...
4. My favorite subject in school is...
(and these all had different multiple choice answers)
Anyway, this was a project I tried to start over the summer and thought of maybe making it my thesis. But it's definitely something I could leave behind to help the Baton Rouge community, right? I also ordered a book I found called, "Playing School". It was written by a public school teacher in Baton Rouge, the things in it are pretty shocking. I haven't finished reading it, because of school and I'm trying to finish Harry Potter :) but it could be one of my potential sources if I were to pursue this.
Emily, you certainly seem to have a lot of grit! Its fantastic to see someone who really cares about helping public schooling because we certainly need it! I love your ideas about the survey and I think this would make for a great thesis! It seems like overall with this schooling and babies, you have a keen interest on youth development! Keep up the work!
ReplyDeleteEmily, you are awesome. You are doing so great with all of your ideas!
ReplyDeleteI love this so much. This really is a big problem especially in our community. It is something that needs to be addressed! I feel like this is a great idea for so many different reasons! Also, you are incorporating children without making your thesis directly about the little babooskis! Great job!!
Very cool idea. There are a lot of things that need to change to help this situation too, so you can go in many different directions. I agree with Jessica: you got grit!
ReplyDeleteYou have such amazing ideas! I totally did not read this before I made my post either, I swear! And you already have like.. an idea of where you can take these! I see that you're focused around children and helping them, which I totally respect and admire.
ReplyDeleteI love this Emily! I think my hair guy's son actually goes to that A school. I could ask him about it for you. Also, the survey we made for the character campaign would be a good survey for you to use! You could recycle it... it would be extremely interesting to see results from the survey from every school in Baton Rouge (public and private). It could be a character development project across the entire city! I agree with your thought that schools in Baton Rouge might not be doing as well because the students aren't doing well, and the students aren't doing well because they might not care about what they are doing in school. This sounds like a character problem, maybe, caused by a lack of motivation. Maybe coming up with ways to get students interested in their school work, and help them see the significance in their education would be another good subtopic to pursue!
ReplyDeleteThanks Liz and yeah I think youre right, character may have something to do with it all. I could definitely look at that as a possible factor.
ReplyDeleteObviously, you like kids. Your enthusiasm has not waned even after summer ended which is promising. You already have a start if you want to pursue this as your thesis because you already haven an idea. Granted that might change, but at least you have a starting place.
ReplyDeleteEmily! I'm so glad you are coming up with all these awesome ideas!! I absolutely love this idea. I think this is something you are definitely passionate about, and you should definitely look more into. I think it could be awesome if you could create a sort of blueprint of what an A school needs and how more schools can become an A school. But it's just an idea.
ReplyDeleteThanks Meha! Yeah that's a great idea, and wouldn't it be awesome if I could help improve Baton Rouge public schools?! ;)
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