Chief Delphi - And now for a useful post from Robby O

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- - And now for a useful post from Robby O - A FIRST School (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=321)

Quote:

Originally posted by mike o'leary
first of all, no offence to anyone connected to the public school system was intended by my post.
however...
my only experiance with public schools is milton public. which, as i mentioned in my previous post, is on probation. i didnt mention that milton is the epitome of suburbia, but it is. in my experiance the teachers treated the classes as jokes - for example, teacher were suprised when fewer then 10 students failed to complete less then 20 homework assignments per term. i went to classrooms that were really converted locker rooms, janitors closets, and even in one case an old bathroom. there were espestos problems. the electrical system in my elementary school was so old and frankly dangerous that we had on average at least 1 electrical fire per month. recently it was discovered that the towns school committee, or at least some of its members, were involved in a scheme through which they siphoned millions of dollars out of the schools budget and into their wallets.
it might well be unfair for me to say that all public schools are the same, but i can only speak from my experiance. and my experiance left much to be desired.
i am not the greatest or most modivated student by a long shot (i found it hard to be scholarly when the first textbook i ever saw was in 6th grade, at which point we had books so disgusting that you could hardly read them...thats what happens to books when middle schoolers handle them and the book is older then the student). i beyond fell through the cracks though. by 3rd grade i had teachers telling my parents that i was a slow student and had trouble keeping up with the other kids and that i should probably be in special ed. at bc high my gpa is still low (around a 2.6 overall). does that qualify me as a slow student? i think not. these teachers would be shocked, if they even remembered me, which i doubt, that i got a 1500 on my psats.

Just because you went to one doesn't mean you went to them all...and seeing that it is on probation...you just stereotyped and assume...NOT COOL.

That one experience doesn't stack up against the thousands of other experiences...

Its like saying that because public schools usually rank higher than alot of private schools at FIRST competitions means they are better...and vice versa (depending on the year)...there are too many variations. You've just offended ALOT of people who went to public schools--I'm one of them.

SATs mean nothing to me...my grades do, and so do my extracurricular activities.

It doesn't matter where you go for high school, as long as you do your best and you show colleges that.

Quote:

My high school is great, exept for the fact that they "dont have money for FIRST". In fact we are one of the ritchest districts in the nation... my team built its robot in a tech lab that consisted of a PC computer lab (26 P200 w/164 mb ram or somthing), a fully functional metal shop (welding and everything) and more tech toys then one could hope for.

But like i said this didn't find its way to first. While our hockey team was travling for free to at least 5 tournaments a year, we didn't even get enough to make a difference for our trip to NYC (and we went the cheap way).

We didn't get any reconition until we got on the front page of our local paper. That day i got 3 letters from school officials congradulating me for my hard work... and how great FIRST was and everything like that, that stopped within a week.

Maybe it would have helped if we had done better at regionals... i dont know, all i know is that FIRST teams deserve at least as much regonition as sports teams from school districts.

my 3 cents
Greg

SATs mean nothing to me...my grades do, and so do my extracurricular activities.

Grades don't necessarily mean anything. Some of the smartest people I know are flunkies, they barely graduated high school, if at all. A piece of paper with A's doesn't mean that you know all about something. I got a C in physics but I can use physics in real life better than anyone in my class. Just remember Albert Einstein, he was considered to be less than average in school and look how he ended up. Your extras should mean more than your grades because they are what you pour your heart and soul into.

Quote:

Originally posted by GregT
My high school is great, exept for the fact that they "dont have money for FIRST". In fact we are one of the ritchest districts in the nation... my team built its robot in a tech lab that consisted of a PC computer lab (26 P200 w/164 mb ram or somthing), a fully functional metal shop (welding and everything) and more tech toys then one could hope for.

But like i said this didn't find its way to first. While our hockey team was travling for free to at least 5 tournaments a year, we didn't even get enough to make a difference for our trip to NYC (and we went the cheap way).

We didn't get any reconition until we got on the front page of our local paper. That day i got 3 letters from school officials congradulating me for my hard work... and how great FIRST was and everything like that, that stopped within a week.

Maybe it would have helped if we had done better at regionals... i dont know, all i know is that FIRST teams deserve at least as much regonition as sports teams from school districts.

my 3 cents
Greg

As far as money goes, that's all politics and nothing more. It's very hard to get money from the school district, particularly when you don't have the connections already. And as far as equipment goes, Edison Tech, which is an innercity Rochester high school, has a better machine shop (we're talking orders of magnitude here) than the suburban one I went to. So money doesn't have too much to do about it (a lot of the equipment gets donated).

Matt