Class alignment has been a constant topic of discussion since before I started high school at LS. Many students feel that there is a high amount of discrepancy between the policies of the same class taught by different teachers. Some teachers even have reputations within the school for being a “hard teacher” or “the good teacher” based on how their classes are structured. Students shouldn’t want to switch classes because of the teacher they have, they should only instead if the level is too hard.
According to the Senate President Alexia Hultin, “course alignment has always been a topic for the Senate,” so they decided to write a proposal for Mr. Stephens. When the Senate puts together a proposal, they observe issues, invite Mr. Stephens to visit their meetings to take input, and consider what to include in his five-year plan for LS. This past fall, Mr. Stephens reached back out to the Student Senate leaders with interest in formulating a plan for class alignment. After looking at sources–including the Senate proposal, school council ideas, and his entry report–Mr. Stephens incorporated an alignment strategy into his five-year plan.
Additionally, the Senate leaders presented their ideas to the LS staff to receive feedback and share the students’ perspective on class alignment. Their presentation highlighted the need for more consistent experiences and expectations within courses without hindering the uniqueness of the LS curriculum. The goal of this presentation, as Alexia said, was “just sharing the student perspective, and it kind of served as an opening for Mr. Stephens to talk more in-depth on what he’s doing for this.” Another big goal was to zero in on the fact that this will start to take place over the next five years–it is not something that will happen overnight–and as Senate Vice President, Bella Reith, added: “it’s just to say, ‘hey, we’re here, this is what we think, and we’d love for you to be a part of this movement towards more aligned classes.”
After receiving feedback from this presentation, it is clear that there are mixed feelings among teachers and departments. Bella mentioned that some teachers will take this and run with it, others might need some adjusting as they might like the way they teach and not want to change it, period, and many are somewhere in the middle. There is a clear need for more teacher-to-teacher discussion, as well as intra-department conversations. We know that some teachers might be tired of hearing this topic discussed repeatedly, while others might think that the students want the classes to be “easier”; but, in reality, the students wanted to share their opinions, experience similar levels of challenge, and try to keep the conversation going.
