School Safety - Can schools ever be safe?

 Safety in schools is extremely important in order to keep the students and staff inside it healthy and ... alive. There has been a website created by the federal government to provide schools and districts with actionable recommendations to create a safe, supportive learning environment where students can thrive and grow. Whether it be bullying, cybersecurity, emergency planning, public health, mental health, or  targeted violence, this website covers them all. The two biggest threats to students in the past few years have been infectious diseases, the COVID-19 pandemic, and targeted violence (gun violence). 

For me, I have been in situations in a K-12 school where both of these situations affected me directly.

Red school with green trees outside, 
blue background with white clouds

The beginning of my junior year of high school, my school was placed into a hard lockdown for hours. I had people texting me from other classrooms, from outside the school, and even within the class that I was in asking me if I was okay and what was going on. Rumors were being spread throughout that there was someone outside firing a gun on our baseball field, someone firing on our football field, that our school police officer had heard shots fired and put us immediately on a hard lockdown. Eventually, after hours of being locked away and the whole sheriff's department showing up at our school, they had determined that it was the air conditioner that had popped and made this noise. Regardless of what it was, I could not have been more thankful for the officers that were at the school that day that were smart enough to put us into lockdown, because who knows what could have happened if it actually was someone outside of our school. The second semester of my junior year is when the pandemic hit and shut the whole world down. We were excited because everyone thought it would be an extra long spring break. Little did we know, we wouldn't be going back until weeks into what was supposed to be my senior year and nothing was back to "normal" after that. I never got to see my friends' smiling faces, I couldn't go to away games with the band to support my boyfriend on the football team, I was spending weeks outside of school because I had been exposed to the virus and couldn't risk exposing anyone else. The media talks about how scary school is for teachers, but they don't address how mentally exhausting it is to be scared to go to school everyday as a student. School should be a place to learn and to enjoy time with others, not to be scared for your life. 

Standardized Testing - what they are and my opinions.

 A standardized test is any form of test that requires all test takers to answer the same questions, or a selection from a common bank of questions, in the same way, and that is scored in a standard or consistent manner according to The Glossary of Education. This makes it possible to compare the relative performance of individual students or groups of students. There are many different types of standardized tests including: achievement tests, aptitude tests, college- admissions tests, international-comparison tests, and psychological tests. These tests can be multiple choice, true - false, essay, or in other formats. Many schools use standardized testing for placements within their school and for post secondary placement. 

For me, I have a love - hate relationship with standardized testing. Having to take an important 

Colored woman in a 
pink shirt sitting at a 
desk with a pencil in hand, a 
scantron on the left
side of her desk, and a 
test on the right side. 

standardized test, like the ACT, gives me test anxiety and causes me to not perform as well on these types of tests. On the other hand, I consider myself to be somewhat smart so these types of standardized tests have helped me grow academically through tough courses in class. Some colleges, like the University of Tennessee, accept test scores for admittance into their university. For me, I was applying mid/most pandemic, meaning that submitting my test scores to the university was optional. Personally, I thought I had a decent test score, so I decided that I would submit my ACT scores instead of writing an additional essay. What I did not know was that this was going to end up hurting me in the long run. I was not advised until after I had already applied that I would have gotten more money to attend if I had not submitted my ACT score. This was extremely frustrating to me because I had worked so hard to get as high of a score as I did, but with UTK's new policy, it meant pretty much nothing.

Flipped Classes - What are they and are they worth it?

What are flipped classes? According to researchers at Harvard, A flipped classroom is a structured class that is built around the idea that direct instruction is not the best use of class. Instead of doing all of the learning and encountering information during class time, students will gather this information before class, leaving class time free for activities that involve a higher order of thinking. This type of instruction is built on the basis that there is no difference between a student listening to a class lecture by themselves compared to having others in class. Basically, a flipped class is when students do the majority of the learning themselves outside of class, before class, then go to class to participate in any activities planned, to then do any homework to make sure they fully understood the topic. 

Some people may argue that there are more benefits to having flipped classes than a normal structured

Cartoon girl with orange hair
shown in three pictures reading
a book, behind a computer, and
sitting at a desk with arrows
pointing to a computer over her 
head. 

class such as the fact that flipped classes are flexible, students can learn at their own pace, or that there are opportunities for a higher level of learning. For me, flipped classes are a learning nightmare. Every single one of my classes at UTK this semester is a flipped class and each class expects me to put in a couple hours before class to learn the material for class that day. While I am taking sixteen hours this semester and having to do the "flipped" work and having to do homework, it is becoming extremely draining. Sometimes, I find myself to be doing the bare minimum to be set for class just so I can get some sleep at night or not have to wake up super early in the morning. Even after I do all of the before class preparation, I still end up having to do numerous hours of homework daily on top of all the work that I already had to do. The amount of work that I have to do could easily be cut in half if a flipped structure was not incorporated in the classes that I am taking, but unfortunately I do not have that luxury.