Research Topics
Classroom Relationships
Nick Bogan
Understanding the Effects of Classroom Relationships
One of the most powerful things for most students across the globe is a good relationship with a teacher. The awareness that a teacher cares about your success and will go out of their way to help you out is enough to change someone’s approach to a class, or even school itself. For many, this need is not met and its influence reaches far beyond the classroom.
Adnan Jeilani
In schools today, teachers lack empathy and are unaware of the importance of building relationships with students. This leads to lower grades, a decrease in attendance, followed by higher school dropout rates. Schools should implement a social emotional learning (SEL) program to build and maintain positive relationships and to help students set and achieve strong goals. According to Why Teacher-Student Relationships Matter an article published in Education Week, “Students spend more than 1,000 hours with their teacher in a typical school year” (Sparks, 2019). Keeping a relationship with a teacher can be important to how well students learn. Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting implications for both students' academic and social development.
Teontay Bryson
The American Psychological Association states that not only having a good relationship with your teachers improves your academics but it also improves the social life of a student. Students are more able to come out of their comfort zone when they have a good relationship with their teacher.
Mental Health
Emily Hawari-Grieder
I believe that schools need to do a better job supporting their students’ mental health.
I have been in four different school districts in Minnesota and only one of them (a day treatment program) gave me adequate mental health support. It’s not for lack of trying, I have experienced first hand that schools don’t have the right resources to support their students who struggle with mental health.
Personalized Learning
In schools and in classrooms, students aren’t always learning in a way that makes sense to them, that allows for individuality, or that meets their needs. This leads to a lack of student engagement and community, overall poor academic outcomes, and students being ill-prepared to enter today’s dynamic, ever-changing workforce. I, as a student, think schools should implement or provide more opportunities for project-based learning, student-directed learning, flipped classrooms, and more. In addition, schools should help train and support teachers with the tools necessary to facilitate and support students in said personalized learning based classrooms.
Ava Shirley
Racial and Socio-Economic Disparities in Achievement
Nathaniel Genene
I am the first person in my family to go to high school in the U.S. The first to take an AP Exam, will be the first to take the SAT, and the first to earn a GED. In schools today marginalized students are underrepresented in advanced academics leading to a gap in achievement, disparity in post secondary opportunities, and lower success rates in college. To fix this schools should reach out to families, invest more in mentorship and support, and expand the existing curriculum.
Effects of Over Crowding
