By Sage Roeder
One of the hottest topics for the graduating class of 2020 is the introduction of CLC. Especially after the recent grade twelve assembly, which, like all the past CLC assemblies, dissolved into relentlessly questioning school admin for answers that they didn’t have. CLC was promised to us as dedicated time to think about our future as graduating students, notably working on post-secondary applications. Now that we are just halfway through semester one, many of the questions that were unanswered in June are still unanswered almost six months later. Giving us this incomplete course tells me that the school board does not take our education seriously.
This course has been a frustration for the school. The largest concern with the way the course is being handled is the lack of structure and direction in the content matter. Gathering from the last assembly, teachers have full autonomy and are only given suggestions on what to teach. They also have complete freedom over how much the crown jewel, the Capstone, is worth in your total CLC graded mark. With a course this new to everyone in the school, teachers should not be getting the same level of freedom while teaching that they would in their normal classes. For, in their normal classrooms, each subject has a curriculum that they are required to teach, meaning that there would not be a difference content-wise between Mr. K and Mr. Q’s Physics 11 courses, just the methods in which they teach it. These “suggestions” for the teachers should not be optional, for a course as important as this one. I want the same tools and opportunities as the other students in my grade, and I do not want whether I have good resources or not based on which teacher I have been randomly assigned to.
Personally, my CLC class has been schoolwork heavy with zero time to work on anything that was promised at the beginning of the semester. I do think these assignments, although mostly ripped straight from Planning 10, are important for us to learn as we become adults. Skills like budgeting, finances, resumes, taxes, etc. are the skills that we, the students, are begging to be taught; and CLC is a great slot to fill with that information. To do this, CLC must be required block that you take, not simply a small meeting once a week. A lot of the grade twelves have busy, stressful schedules juggling extra-curriculars, schoolwork, jobs, volunteering, etc., and with this added coursework, it is like being forced to take another entire course plus two major projects and no time to apply for the truly important parts for my future. On the flip side, students who do not have an avalanche of assignments every time they step into their CLC class, will have the right amount of time to create the digital portfolio and Capstone, while the rest of us will produce uninspired and rushed pieces which could be worth anything from 100% to 10% of our grade. Some of us simply do not have the most time to complete an extra course and create possibly two large projects.
The mentorship aspect of the course will not be attempted by any student this year, I can guarantee it. With the incredibly short amounts of time and the large workload, I am certainly not thinking about the grade ten students. The mixture of all the grades simply ensures that the grade elevens and tens will just repeatedly learn the same things over and over, with no course to move onto. The grade twelves have vastly different needs than the grade tens and elevens, and time should be given to us to work on our applications as promised those six months ago.
All we want is clear answers. Give us the rubric for our capstones, some coherency in our classrooms, and time to work on the two huge projects you have given to us less than a month ago. For the years to come, consider making CLC into a required course, similar to how Planning 10 was years ago. I understand that this would mean it would be on a semester schedule, but not a single teacher is equipped to help us with scholarships or university resources, and I do not expect them to be. No time is being given to us to work on these time-sensitive applications, so why would it matter if the courses were semester restricted? Please do not damage our educational opportunities based on “trying something out”. These are our lives, and the tools that we need to be successful adults after high school, and I take it very seriously.