Comment by calebhicks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by calebhicks | Hacker News Reader

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I'm in my 4th year of teaching, yet I graduated from high school 10 years ago. How well do you remember your daily schedule from 10 years ago? Do you remember what made you restless? What made you tired? What made you stop paying attention? And were you so meta cognizant that you recognized the source of that restlessness?

Doubt it.

It is rare for teachers to have the time to truly consider the student's perspective in their class, and the context of how that fits into the entire school day experience.

EDIT: I should note that I read this article a few days ago. The entire staff at my school held a discussion on how to make school better in that regard. This blog post alone will at minimum affect the 1400 students at our school, but given the number of places I've seen it shared, it will have a much larger impact than that. Always a good reminder.

I can appreciate the fresh aspect of it, but I do definitely recall the stark contrast between 12th grade and my first semester at the local community college. Just the fact that you didn't always have to be in a class room -- you could schedule an hour break between classes, and go hang out in the cafeteria or library to catch up on some work. Or go outside between classes and walk around (in high school it was like being in a day prison, not allowed to leave the building). Oh, and you didn't need to get anyone's permission to use the washroom. Not to mention that there was no forced group activities such as dodge ball (any athletics was strictly up to you signing up for it).

For me, the biggest change between high school and college was honestly just being able to wake up at 8 AM instead of 6-something. Suddenly my recurring insomnia, and my tendency to just flat-out fall asleep during afternoon classes, were mostly gone.

I don't disagree. In fact, I agree completely with the author of the linked post. The symptoms he writes about are very real, and very damaging.

I just think it's hard to expect every teacher (even fresh ones, 4-6 years out of high school themselves), to remember these specific causes of what made high school a subpar learning environment.

I was last in highschool over 25 years ago, I still remember how awful it was as an educational experience.

Remembering that it was awful isn't the same as remembering, or appropriately identifying, why.

Good effort

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