Reflection
My interview with Serafina was the first time I’ve conducted an interview so these experiences and tactics I’ve picked up while doing this interview are new to me. Since Serafina is a close friend of mine, building that sense of comfort wasn’t that difficult for me to do. In order to find someone that could possibly relate to my experiences or at least give me a different perspective of the topic revolving around lack of resources in the education system, I picked someone who shared the same age and attended the same high school as me. This created a way for me to be able to document both similarities and differences about our thoughts on the topic. I also believe that it was important to pick someone to interview who had already finished high school because in my opinion interviewing a student still currently in high school would have given different answers to certain questions or don’t fully understand the setback they will experience when starting college. In order to avoid my responses being greatly affected, I chose someone who had only recently finished high school and experienced the beginning of college. During my interview, my interviewee started ranting during one of the questions that were asked and listening to her perspective led me to choosing a different angle at approaching the topic. I decided to focus more on the lack of resources and the lack of consideration for a students’ opinion in the matter as Serafina had discussed it as an issue during our interview. One of the course learning objectives I was able to practice and gain skills in was the 4th objective which is “develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes”. Being able to conduct the interview and analyze the recording multiple times helped me understand the body language shown while the interviewee was speaking can really help you make inferences on how the speaker is feeling and their emotions towards the topic overall. Another factor that really helped me with my analysis was the word-for-word transcript. It made navigating through the interview much easier for me and typing it out helped me come up with new ideas as I was doing it.
Education Around the World
Going into this research, the plan was to navigate information to show that the lack of students receiving an education is partially due to the fact that students no longer see the value in receiving an education with the systems set in place. After conducting my interview with Serafina, I have decided to approach my research at a completely different angle. My topic is focusing on the lack of resources in New York City’s education system that prepare students for a college level education. In order to approach this topic, I compared a foreign education system to the NYC education system in order to discover what other systems put into play for students and if that could possibly work in NYC. When it came to picking who to interview, Serafina was my first option considering that we technically grew up together in the same school environment, share the same age and are both at the same level in college. One thing we didn’t share was the fact that she had experienced education in 2 different places around the world which were here in New York and back in Guyana, her native country. This was possible due to the fact that she had moved to America in 2018. Starting from 8th grade, we attended the same middle school and high school going forward.
By interviewing Serafina I wanted to shed light on an education system that isn’t putting forth what is needed to lead students to success and which initially causes students to turn their backs on their own education. One of the first things that caught my attention during our interview was how she stated that she preferred NYC’s education system simply for the fact that it was much easier compared to Guyana. After starting college, I realized that high school was nothing to stress about; however while in high school, some students who didn’t have a similar background to Serafina struggled tremendously when it came to work. I’ve witnessed many who reached a point where they had stopped doing or caring for the work overall. From my observations, these students grew up their whole lives going to public schools under the DOE. This leads to the questioning on whether this is a flaw for the system or whether NYCDOE should find a different approach on the curriculum that better fits the needs of the students. When it came to asking Serafina on whether she thought it was a flaw, she believed that it wasn’t bad and considered it to be average.
One of the main questions we discussed that I found to be wholeheartedly in support of was Serafina’s response to the 2nd question which was “Is there something that you would transfer over from Guyana’s education system into New York city’s education system? If so, why?”. During the interview, she responded to this question by stating, “So Like I had to decide a stream and that’s what all my course subjects would focus on. And that’s all in high school by the way. For example my brother was in the technical stream so he took classes like technical drawing, um math classes. It was like an engineering stream in a sense and there was also a physics stream, business streams, it’s kind of like a major in college. But I think if that could be transferred to the New York system in high school, then that would help like a lot of kids when it comes time to pick your major in college”. I believe that this gives students a chance to experiment with the fields they could possibly enter in the future instead of being thrown straight into a major once completing high school. It saves time and effort for many. From my own personal experiences in our high school, we were expected to take the courses given to us. We had no choice in which focus we wanted or even the AP courses that we were required to take.
This all roots down to one answer which is the fact that the students’ opinions are not taken into consideration when coming to these conclusions. Students are expected to adapt to what is given to them and this takes away the sense of meaning and enjoyment from completing school. Serafina also talks about the amount of AP courses that she along with her class were forced into taking which inherently led to nothing beneficial because as she described, it didn’t give her actual college experience and in the end majority including her did not receive the credits for majority of the AP classes that were taken. Another thing that makes it even worse was that some colleges didn’t accept the credits that were achieved in high school. A solution we discussed pertaining to this topic was that college now classes should be encouraged for students instead of AP classes considering that no matter the outcome, the students will always leave with some type of experience or mindset of what college is like which is extremely beneficial when it comes to starting college. This led to the conclusion that the NYCDOE doesn’t have to change or erase the entire system, however they should find different routes to lead to a student’s success that is not only beneficial for the teachers/adults but also for a students’ wellbeing.
