Choose What Leads to Your Career or What decides Your Career?
By Christal H.
I don’t like a school where the only thing I can do is studying, and I am sure, nobody else likes it neither.
Starting in 2017, students in San Francisco International High School are required to take Early College classes during their senior year. In this early college model, students take regular high school classes in the morning and attend college classes in the afternoon after lunch by taking the school buses. Each of the seniors takes one college class in Fall Semester, and two in Spring Semester. In Spring, seniors attend classes from Monday to Thursday until 4 PM, compared to regular high school schedule gets off classes at 3:10 PM. In 2018, junior students start to attend Early College classes in advance, by taking the same class as seniors took in Fall Semester.
As a result, students have less time to work and participate in extracurricular activities. As a student at San Francisco International High School, I did a survey in my senior class. According to the survey, there are 10 out of 20 students who participate in sports teams after school, and 11 out of 20 students work after school. Among these 11 students who work after school, 7 of them shifts until 1 AM. Easy to see, the required college classes are impacted students’ life outside of school; therefore, it should be optional.
Sport is an important part of school life. According to Nelson Mwesigye, a lecturer at Kigali Institute of management, says, “Sports and games are the way of enhancing the children’s mental and physical growth… Sports play a pivotal role in the makeup of a young athlete, especially in the middle school to high school years where student-athletes are much more mature and mentally developed”. This quote fully explains the importance of sports to students, especially in middle and high school. Sports help students mental and physical health by bringing them the opportunities to develop the friendship, collaboration, team spirit, and responsibility, etc. Sports develop students’ character traits that are going to help students become successful in academic.
Besides being a student, I am also a cheerleader, president of a volunteer club, and athlete in SFIHS. I became one of the first cheerleaders in our school, and we practiced almost every day after school last semester. However, this semester we have not practice at least one since the Early College started. Because of some reasons, there are only 4 cheerleaders in our team so far, one is junior and three of us are seniors (juniors have Monday in school, Tuesday and Friday in Early College, and Wednesday & Thursday in Internship site). Since this year, seniors are taking two classes and most of them off at 4, but last year, I only had to take one class which off at 2:30 PM. Therefore, we are able to attend practice at school every day last semester. However, we are not able to make the practice happen this semester, and because of this we only have 4 cheerleaders on our team.
There are top 5 for both boys and girls badminton players. Unfortunately, all of us are 6 of us are seniors, and rest are juniors. Game days are in Tuesday and Friday starting at 4 PM, and the rest of days we hold practice in school. However, based on this situation, most of us are not able to appear on time in game days. So far, 2 players said they won’t continue joining badminton this year because of they are too busy in Early College. Some other players and I are shifting between continue or quit because we have no way to figure out how it works.
Before I started taking early college, I did monthly visit in senior buildings. During the visit, I conducted exercises, taught disaster preparedness education, and provided entertainment for elderly. I enjoyed being surrounded by elderly and seeing the passion they have for leading new things. And now, it was all in the past. I am not able to do it anymore because of the scheduling conflict with Early College.
The issue of Early College can be viewed from several different perspectives. In the article Preparing Students for College: the implementation and impact of the Early College High School model, “The school had created a college-going culture that gave students access to college preparatory courses as well as specific training in what they needed to do to be ready for college (2010)”. The purpose of Early College High School is to prepare students for college when that still in high school, which is also a beneficiary program for First Generation College Students who are able to get help at home. Furthermore, this program actually reported engaging students in academic with associated instruction.
According to Mr. Kyle, a teacher in SFIHS, there are a few reasons why we do Early College in SFIHS:
- Students can graduate with associate degree
- Reduce the number of students who drop out of high school
- Eligible for students to work for job that requires college degree
- Get students ready for college
- Help students become more competitive to apply for UCs and privates colleges with college credits
Even though he explained all above advantaged about Early College, he also said, “Extracurricular activities let students to careers, and help on the college application.” Then, what can we do now in order to solve this problem? Personally, I don’t think going to Early College can reduce the number of students who drop out of high school. It actually just takes students more time to take care of both high school and college classes. I heard from many students who said they feel stressed about the Early College which makes them feel sick for school.
In conclusion, Early College does help students prepare for college and career, but it also impacts students daily life besides school. All above are related to the scheduling conflict. How about we change the time of Early College and give more options to students. I notice that professors usually offer morning and afternoon classes. If we do the morning classes and come back to school for lunch and classes in the afternoon, we could avoid the problem of getting off late for classes. Furthermore, instead of requiring students taking Early College classes, the school should make it optional for students who have problems with financial or other things. However, the school still has the responsibility to come out a solution for the problem of the scheduling conflict. Instead of leaving the problem for students to solve and arrange their time for Early College.
I am worried that SFIHS will become a school only focus on academic. Now, it is the time for us to make some changes from stopping SFIHS to become a “school to study”.
