Teachers who have students across all grade levels were asked questions about their unique experiences teaching freshmen through seniors. We received many shared and differing opinions from these teachers, but all of them provided valuable insight from a third-person perspective.
One of the biggest points of agreement between teachers on the differences between underclassmen and upperclassmen is independence. They feel as though upperclassmen need less guidance on what to do compared to their younger counterparts. When it comes to structuring lesson plans for upperclassmen, they can give them a direction and let them work, while with underclassmen they sort of need to work them through the assignment.
Mrs. Zachar, the French teacher, sees this difference a lot in terms of handling your own classwork.
“As I go through the grade levels, one of the main things I see change is more of a sense of responsibility. As far as when you first start out, you need a lot more guidance. This is very generalized, but you need a lot more guidance where I’m like, “Hey, you could do this, you could do this, you should do this. And then as you go along, you need a lot less of that from me, where you just already know what to do. You already do it on your own. You’re pretty good with your time. You’re pretty good at coming prepared and getting your stuff done.” But that always takes time,” said Zachar.
One of the biggest points of difference between the teachers is what mistakes they think that freshmen and sophomore students make during scheduling, with some believing that underclassmen will take classes with their friends even if they are not ready for them, and others believing that underclassmen will sell themselves short when it comes to scheduling. All teachers that were interviewed agreed that juniors and seniors often make the mistake of trying to take the easiest classes they can, instead of setting themselves up for their post-high school careers.
Mr.Garcar, an honors and CCP math teacher, believes that underclassmen often lack a sense of direction during scheduling.
“Probably no fault of their own. I think not necessarily knowing kind of where the end goal is. So it’s difficult for some underclassmen who don’t really know what their future goals are going to be post high school. We try to set students up, so they’re taking the correct courses and the right path that will help them the best,” said Garcar.
The teachers had the most homogeneous train of thought when it comes to how students have changed over the years. The biggest change is attention span; students today have a harder time focusing then they did a few years ago. One teacher reported that she has to change activities multiple times per class to keep students from being distracted.
Mr. Drass, the biology teacher, theorizes that this change in attention span is due to the advent of technology.
“I notice that technology has become more and more of a distraction, even though with the cell phone policy getting set in place last year, it’s less than it has been in the past. But I do notice there’s more ways for students to be distracted as time goes on. Every year it seems like something else pops up that gets kids’ heads out of the classroom,” said Drass.
