This year, the school implemented a new “writing initiative.” This requires students to write a five paragraph essay containing an introduction, two claim-and-support paragraphs, a counter claim, and a conclusion, in each class. Topics are assigned to the students, so they don’t really have much say in the matter. It’s ridiculous that the essays must be written in core classes, as well as elective classes like Team Sports and sewing.
The main reason this initiative was created is because of the poor writing scores of MHS on the ACTs and other standardized tests. However, the reason students writing isn’t up to grade level standards is because the English teachers don’t have high expectations for the work that is being turned in; as long as the format is right, the student has a pretty good chance of getting a decent grade on the paper. If teachers raised their standards on the quality of essays and papers, I believe that this problem wouldn’t have started in the first place.
Another problem with this initiative is that the students see the same chart and get taught almost the same exact lesson repeatedly. It’s just tedious. Getting taught a lesson on something you already know is very annoying, it just wastes time that you could be using to actually learn new material. One of these essays, with the lesson and the actual writing time, take up the whole entire hour in most cases.
I agree improvements should be made with the writing quality of the students in MHS, but the administration is trying to tackle it in the wrong way.