Tag Archives: learning

Editorials/Student Voice, School Life

Montessori to high school      

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By: Charlotte Aver

Photo by Kaique Rocha on Pexels.com

Last year I was in a Montessori public middle school, making it my 9th year in a Montessori school. I had 4 teachers and their names were Christine, Kyle, Brooke, and Amy; they had told us to call them by their first names. This year I have had teachers tell me that under no circumstances am I or any other student to call them by their first name. This amongst many other things is something that has been a culture shock to me coming from a Montessori school.

One of the most different things is how our day is structured. At my Montessori school we would have meetings in the morning and midday, in between we would have lessons and a work time to finish all of our work. In the afternoon we would have occupations which are essentially the same as electives. Something that made this conventionally odd schedule possible was that my graduating class of 8th graders was only 16 people and we had all known each other since 3rd grade. Here in high school there are bells separating the day, and A days and B days. We also have upwards of 200 people in one grade.

The classroom at my Montessori school was much smaller than anything at this school. We had three connected rooms, and a modular, and that was our whole middle school. We only had enough chairs and tables for half the middle school class to sit at once which meant that we would sit on the floor for the majority of the time. This obviously is not true for high school, and I am incredibly thankful for being able to sit at tables and chairs.

In our classroom we also only had four iPads and a Mac book, this made it excessively hard for us to do some of the work that was assigned to us. In high school, every student has their own iPad.

We also ran a farm stand and had our own farm at my old school. We would work throughout the year to make our own money as a class. At the end of the year we would use the money we made to go on a trip at the end of the year.

The transition was quite jarring but I feel as though I have adjusted quickly. Almost everything is different from Montessori to public High school except for the essential idea that you are learning. There are pros and cons to each way of learning: not enough students, too many students, no technology, too much technology. Which ever way you were taught it all evens out in the end.

Getting To Know/History, School Life

AP and IB: A comparison of two accelerated programs

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By Hannan Mohammed

Most high school students in America have heard of either the Advanced Placement program or the International Baccalaureate program, and many students take classes in these programs as a way to either earn college credit or to be better prepared for college with rigorous courses. However, many students also wonder what makes these programs different from, or similar to, one another.

There are two main differences between these two programs, which are their goals and what they emphasize: Advanced Placement emphasizes college-level courses to prepare students for success in higher education, while International Baccalaureate emphasizes global citizenship and a well-rounded education to prepare students for life beyond college.

But how do these two main differences show up? The differing emphases these two programs have reflects in how/where they were created, and the classes/curriculum.

Origins

While both the AP and IB programs originated in the same time period of the 1950s-60s, they were created in different countries and for different reasons as well.

In the 1950s, after the end of World War II, there was a gap between high school graduation and college graduation in the U.S.; the Ford Foundation created the Fund for the Advancement of Education, conducting two studies that found that high schools and colleges should work together to let high-achieving students work at a higher level. A pilot program was launched in 1952, and the College Board started administrating the Advanced Placement program in 1955.

From the 1970s through the 1990s, the College Board continued to expand its reach across America, including making efforts to include low-income students and using Pre-AP initiatives to prepare middle school students to take AP courses and exams in high school.

These efforts to reach more students and give them more access to higher-level classes that can prepare them for success in college and higher education reflects the AP program’s goal of closing the gap between high school graduation and college graduation by preparing students with college-level work.

The IB program, on the other hand, originated in Geneva, Switzerland in 1962, with English and French as the official languages. Originally, the first IB exams were taken in 1970; students from 12 schools in 10 countries took exams in the IB Diploma Programme, the first curriculum of the program.

Over the course of the 70s, new requirements were added, such as the Extended Essay in 1974, and IB conferences were held in The Hague, Geneva, and London, where 32 countries were represented. As the IB program continued to expand across the world, more curriculums were added: the Middle Years Programme in 1994 for students ages 11-16, the Primary Years Programme in 1997 for students ages 3-12, and the Career-related Programme in 2012 for students ages 16-19.

Each of these programmes are meant to give students a well-rounded education from a young age, prioritizing a global perspective with world languages and drawing attention to how students interact with the world in different ways, which reflects the IB’s goal of global citizenship.

Curriculum

The second way that the major difference between the AP and IB programs is shown is the structure of the curriculum and requirements to pass.

To start, the AP program offers about 40 different courses in basic subjects such as the arts, math and computer science, English, history and social sciences. However, these classes are more in-depth with specific focuses. For example, taking an AP History and Social Sciences course could mean taking a class that focuses on African-American studies, psychology, human geography, or even macroeconomics, depending on what a high school might offer. This is one way the AP program’s goal of college-level education is reflected; through highly-focused classes that are similar to courses you might take in college.

In the May of each year, AP exams are administered to students to show their mastery of what they learned. For most classes, this includes multiple choice questions and free-response questions. Most exams take around 3 hours. Then, students are given a score of 1-5.

The scores on the exams are important, since this can determine whether a student can earn college credit for the class; most colleges require a minimum score of 3-4 before awarding credit.

The IB program has a different structure; for students going into IB high schools in America, 9th and 10th graders are required to participate in the Middle Years Programme, which is meant to prepare them for either the Diploma Programme or the Career-related Programme. Most 10th graders are required to complete the Personal Project, which gives them a chance to explore their own interests and develop research skills.

After 10th grade, students can either go into the Diploma Programme (taking and testing in 6 IB classes), the Career-related Programme (the same requirements as the DP with the CP core and career-related studies), or to take regular high school classes and test in a few IB classes.

The IB DP courses can either be standard level (SL) or higher level (HL), and while they’re more broad compared to AP courses, they reflect the program’s emphasis on global citizenship by offering a more well-rounded education. In addition, DP students also have to complete a Theory of Knowledge (TOK) class, an Extended Essay, and Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS). These extra requirements are meant to give students a chance to take their learning beyond the classroom and apply it to themselves or others, which reflects the program’s goal of helping students to succeed beyond higher education.

The IB exams are often taken in the spring of each year, which consists of internal assessments (fieldwork, laboratory work, investigations), which come from the classroom, and external assessments (essays, structured questions) which come from the IB program itself. These exams can take most of the day, and are scored from 1-7. These scores, along with completing TOK, the Extended Essay, and CAS, count towards completing the DP or the CP. Some colleges accept IB exam scores, but they are not as widely accepted as AP scores.

This curriculum structure reflects the IB’s goal of being well-rounded by giving students a broad range of subjects and it reflects the goal of success beyond higher education by giving them a chance to apply their education to themselves and the world.

Conclusion

The Advanced Placement and the International Baccalaureate programs share some similarities as programs that help high school students be more prepared and successful in higher education. However, their different goals of college preparation vs. preparation for global citizenship are reflected in their origins (AP starting in the US and IB originating internationally) and their curriculums of focused, in-depth classes (AP) and broad classes that can be applied beyond school (IB).

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For more information about either of these programs, please feel free to visit their websites here:

Editorials/Student Voice, School Life, Tech/Games

The real reason some students use AI

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By: Nathaniel de Sam Lazaro

In the educational world today, much is made about artificial intelligence (AI) and how it could be used by students to cheat in their classes. 

By using AI, students are able to create work with far less effort than if they did it themselves, creating a well warranted fear amongst teachers that their students may be using AI to cheat by passing off AI generated work as their own. Not only is this academically dishonest, it actively hinders the student’s education. This fear among educators has been exacerbated by the increasing difficulty of differentiating work made by AI from that made by students.

Personally, I have never used AI to cheat, though I will admit to having intrusive thoughts of doing so from time to time. This thought comes up whenever I am struggling with an assignment, telling me that I could perhaps earn the same grade more easily, without doing any work. 

The reason I’ve never given in is not out of a fear of being caught or some compulsion to blindly follow rules, but because I know that by doing so, I would be hindering my own education. I wouldn’t be gaining the knowledge or skills that I would have if I were to do the assignment myself. This mentality is what has prevented me from giving in to this urge. But this made me realize that students who do use AI are doing so because they don’t value their own learning, only valuing the grade they earn in the class.

I was curious about what other people’s mentalities toward this were, so I asked some of my friends the following question: “If you could have AI do some or all of your assignments, knowing that there was no chance you would ever be caught, would you do so, and why?” Their responses intrigued me. 

Some people told me that no, they wouldn’t use AI in any cases, because they wouldn’t learn without doing so. This is similar to my mentality, and everyone seemed to agree with this in at least some of their classes. Some friends of mine stated that they would do so for certain classes, since they thought that those classes’ material didn’t matter for their planned careers. In other words, they saw no value in these classes other than to pass them, moving them closer to graduating. 

How does this happen, that these students don’t see any value in their learning except to pass a test, to get good grades, to get into college, and to start their career? They aren’t born this way. Young children have an endless amount of questions on their mind. They are naturally curious, ask deep questions, and annoy their parents by constantly asking “Why?”

By contrast, High School students only seem to see school as a transaction to get to where they want in life, and gain the information taught for the purposes of passing a test and getting an “A”. What happens that takes this natural curiosity out of our students between when they start elementary school and when they get to high school? What drives these students to use AI to pass their class, while they are missing out on learning and skills they would gain by doing their work on their own, missing out on the answers to the deep questions they asked when they were a child?

I think the answer is that our education system, and society as a whole, emphasizes grades above all else. If I could use AI and get the same grade, why not do so? Yes, I would be missing out on learning, but that doesn’t matter if all that I care about is my grade. In the above hypothetical, there are no consequences for using AI. One could get an A without doing any work on their own. In order to choose not to do so, a student would need to value learning, knowledge, and curiosity in and of themselves in order to get the most out of their education. Unfortunately, what is usually valued most by parents, educators, colleges, and society as a whole, is simply a letter on a piece of paper or computer screen. And in many cases, the allure of that letter grows to outweigh or even destroy any value one may have placed on what it is supposed to represent. 

Editorials/Student Voice, School Life

Learning styles

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By: Nathaniel de Sam Lazaro

Image created with Canva AI

As a student at Highland, you have probably heard a teacher at some point talk about your “learning style.” We are told that there are three learning styles, visual, auditory, and tactile, and that everyone prefers one of these as a method of learning.

Visual learners like to see things to understand them, auditory learners prefer to have things explained to them through audio or text, and tactile learners like to understand things using physical objects and things they can touch and feel. We are instructed to take tests to determine our learning style.

Supposedly, understanding our learning style will help us in school by allowing us to understand how we learn. It will help our teachers teach us as well, by catering to our preferred method of learning.

We are made to assume that the concept of learning styles, and these tests to determine them, are backed up by science. But in fact, they are not.

The idea of learning styles gained popularity in the 1970s, at a time when psychology was focused on individual differences between people. The idea was that people learned in different ways, and that these differences could be split into different categories of learning. Since then, at least 71 different models have been created of learning styles. And none of them have stood up when held to scientific scrutiny.

A recent study by the University of Michigan broke down many of the problems with learning styles. It found that nearly everyone experiences traits of the various learning styles at different times. For example, they found that nearly everyone learned to ride a bike best tactilly, that is, by the physical act of doing such. Furthermore, the same person can exhibit different “styles” at different times, and when learning different things.

The larger, fundamental problem was that there was no evidence that teaching to a learning style had any impact on student’s ability to gain knowledge and skills.

The American Psychological Association estimates that nearly 90% of teachers still believe in the myth that teaching to a learning style improves learning and academic performance. In addition, 29 states, including Minnesota, still require teachers to be taught about the supposed benefits of learning styles. Only one state, Massachusetts, educates teachers on the fact that this theory has been disproven by various studies.

I think it is time that we stop telling teachers about these debunked theories, which waste time and effort in teaching and learning. It may even be detrimental, prescribing students specific strategies rather than allowing us to determine what works best for us.