What is wrong with Manual Arts?

This story appeared in The Toiler Times, the student newspaper of Manual Arts High School.

By Juanita Yat

What’s wrong with Manual Arts High School they ask?” Well to start off with you have students thinking it is okay to come to school buzzed and half asleep. Students tend to sleep late or not at all, also they think it is okay to sleep during their teacher’s lecture. Students must understand that by not sleeping it causes them not to work as well in school. This is only the beginning.

You have teachers that prefer being on their phones or reading the newspaper to teaching their students. You also have teachers thinking that just because a group of students don’t want to learn they aren’t going to teach.

Then you have the class clowns that don’t know when it is time to joke around and when it’s time to focus. Class clowns sometimes are the life of the classroom, but there are times to play around and act goofy and there times to focus on school work. I honestly think that teachers should take action towards these students.

You have students coming late; most of the times these students are the ones behind. Also, some students come to school without supplies; these are the students that arrive to school without any sort of backpack.

Constantly teachers have a problem with students not finishing their work because they are on their phones, iPods, and talking. Students not only do not pay attention, but sometimes their phones go off in class.

Many students that don’t do their work tend to bring another person down with them. These problems are not fair to the students who actually come to school to learn and to get their education.

Then you also have the dean’s office picking up students 30 minutes before third period even ends. Let’s not forget about when students are entering the Manual Arts gates they have the staff looking at them like they are convicts. The dean’s office tends to send students home or keep them in their “jail” all day. They trip about the dumbest things that make students not want to come to school or to switch schools, so we lose a lot of smart students. As a result when it comes to the CAHSEE students don’t take the test seriously or don’t even bother to show up.

All students have the ability to pass the CAHSEE exam the first time around, but instead we have students in their senior year who haven’t even passed. Not only does this affect our students during testing, it affects our school.

So when parents ask their students what they have learned, they don’t have any idea what to say. This makes me feel that the Manual Arts family should try a little bit harder and maybe someday all these problems will change.