in today and joined with mr eagle and mr suit all talking about way to grade school districts want kids to tell them selves but not the expense of their mental wellbeing says emily paul attack a sofa studies teacher at his ill south high school ninety five percent of teens are felt inferior in their lives of these teens thirty eight percent report is because of their intelligence this may be from the stress the academic competition place on students by comparing them too harshly by their way to g p a high school as have so much pressure placed on them to retain good grades and i do you say but it's hard for any student to really make themselves look at academically on paper when everyone's g p a is nowadays so waited our school district to come out this year require an all courses for any waiting to count well it's a great thing that more this is because so many students are getting higher g p s because of the waiting applied to their g p a from advanced courses they are not actually getting the highest grade in student to put in the effort to get the desired grade should be the ones rewarded with waiting stress can also be a huge concern that comes with such great inflation academic competition that is perpetuated by comparing inflated g p a as can scare students and cause an emotional stress they think they need to take in the hardest classes they can possibly take for example palo alto school district has cited to a all grades with the exception of freshman grades to levy it's just for new high schoolers that way students could focus more on doing their best in the courses that they're taking to get the g p a they want and not worrying about the course itself being waited another factor to stress can be excessive  hayes an assistant superintendent of student services many parents want their children to either meet or suppress what they have achieved but there's not a whole lot of rumors or past success of a parent who is a c e o of fortune five hundred company since the world not just in high school setting but in the workforce too is so competitive it's obvious parents would want their children to get the best grades they can for the best chance of success however such pressure with lack of positive reinforcement can cause more harm than good and pile on the mountain of stress that high schoolers already have to face with such academic competition kept to a minimum with altered weighting the need for students to test it out comparing themselves to others will also be minimized well so first off i just want to ask you guys what do you think some of the benefits and one of the negative effects of waiting are for students well care i would save sort of based on your introduction a lot of the things that we've done here at the high school were done with the intent of trying to reduce some of that  pressure when i started peters township high school we ranked students so at the end of the year or actually go when the student would go into their senior year every student had a rake in their class and we had eliminated those things because we did not want the students to compare their classes there in their achievement in each of their classes we wanted their achievement be their own and so the other part of that is that there actually is not a top g p a so as often colleges will ask us what is the top g p a that a student can get and we don't have one it is an open ended question and then again that is to remove that proposed ranking to eliminate the sort of comparison between all of the students so i think when we have come to our rank or our our weighted grades system ours was created to try to reward students for their hard work for  taking that step to maybe taking a first a p or first honors class and realizing that the expectation the workload is going to be greater then the class may be proceeding to that and why it's reward students with some advance warning or excuse me waiting in their g p a thoughts ok now do you think that the fact that different high schools have different systems of waiting makes unfair for students in college so when we talked to  last year we talked to a number of college reps when they come to the school some colleges actually say that they have seen sixty or seventy different ways of calculating and g p a and so really what's most important when a student applies to college is that they want to see what types of classes they are taking so if you're going to go into media or communications that those are the classes that you're taking in you're excel in them if you're going to a competitive college and so they want to see that you've taken a peon arts classes and done well so it's really the final grade in each individual class that is more important than the g p a itself and whether things are colleges look at the sides g p a like extracurricular it's i would say a and test scores and i say t scores are not the only things that the colleges are going to look at there are a look at your course load are you challenging yourself while you're here at high school they're all ok also what you're doing outside of class work so are you in a lot of clubs and activities are you involved in your community or are you volunteering they want to see kind of the reflection of who you are as a person rather than that you're taking all the courses and then you have really good test scores but you were so focused on academics they want to see that you were also involved in other things so i would say it's a holistic picture of who you are as a person so you don't really need to stress that much about you now am i taking every p course is my all my grades going to be ok everything's going to work out in the end and one of the reasons that we encourage students to try in a piano or an honors class is that when students make that transition to college they are taking courses where they are not getting the homework grade or they're not getting class participation points or doing that weekly project so the student has to learn to assess on their own are they learning the material it and it their grade may come down to just a midterm and a fine all and so if the student isn't used to you know if every grade that they do is homework or a daily homework rate and daily participation they're getting a lot of points that way they're not training themselves to do a self assessment of whether they're learning content and  guys see a lot of students overwhelming themselves with honors and a p classes and should they take it down a notch that i think is a very individualized question i mean certainly if students aspiration is to go to an ivy league school or if they want to go to a direct med program where when the student applies to college they're getting into both their undergraduate medical degree studies then i do think they need to take the most challenging class in each subject area because the applicant pool is going to be so competitive but i do think that most students can have a balance of academic honors and a p so that they are learning how to be a good student while also learning how to be a healthy student throughout school i think you touched on this earlier but would you say that it's better to have an a in an academic course i would say that we get that question a lot  certainly it is individualized i think that it isn't as as simple saying which is better i guess if you are taking an honors and a p class do you think that it is possible that you can get in a that class and if you aren't then are there things that you could be doing differently so i think students need to move away from always seeing their classes as success or fit or failure or better or worse so i think that times they can look at their study skills or their class preparation are they are there things that i can do differently that may improve my grade instead of just pouring more time into preparation and i think kerry the best way to answer that question is you know am i feeling challenged in my courses so if you're between taking academic or honors or a p it's really just asking you know am i being challenged or can i be challenged more and then we view it can answer that question then i think you should go with your gut and take that course and you see a lot of students basing like their self worth off g p a and kind of scary in themselves comparing them to others i think that's a very individualized question but do you think so i think that that that's sort of the essence of being a teenager it seems that everything is certainly filtered through here and now and you'll see students that well on one day recognize that they very good students and on the next day they're so i think that they're dumb or stupid because they didn't do as well on a test but a final grade in a class has no meaning as to whether a student is intelligent or not it's just whether they were able to sort of do all the fill in all the check marks for that class and when students do get overwhelmed why should they go i talked to counselors or a trusted adult to help but that i feel like it's very easy to kind of turn your feelings inside and keep them inside but then everything bottles up and sometimes we just explode when things bought off so it's very good to talk to your counsellor and talk to your teachers because they're here for you too they don't just come to work every day and just be here they're here to help you they want to see  just as are your counselors you know and also it never hurts to talk to a friend either you guys can talk it if they're in the same class you guys can talk it out and say you know what's going on do you feel this way and if you guys agree and feel the same way then you kind of are and getting those feelings out and you're talking about them rather than bringing them in internally and kind of bottling everything up and exploiting and you know communicating and asking for help is a good life skill nobody can get through life just doing things themselves and certainly when we're doing tasks here work  whether working in something office or organizing the p s a t is we need lots of help and so we reach out for all those our colleagues to help us with those projects and it's also good practice to for your post secondary choices that you decide to go to if you decide to go to college you have to be able to seek out those kind of those helping services and then even if you would just go on to a job or a technical school you would still need of figure out who you need to talk to to get your questions answered so it kind of gives you that practice of reaching out and finding resources to help you and what are the some of the things that you would recommend for someone overwhelmed g p a or their courses like should they talk to their teachers should they find new ways of studying i think is mr ringold saying i've you know if you come down to your concert i think one of the first questions or the first discussion points is why does the student feel that they need a certain grade or a certain g p a what is the end goal that they are seeking out and so i think talking through that process of understanding where in your understanding of your g p a where that falls in the in the weight of that importance in your life so i think some students you have to go back to your point of confidence i think some students  think i need to get a for me to feel good about myself and then be confident who i am and so then there's just a mis placement of worth on those type of things and if you are taking an a p course and you find that it is too challenging talk to your teacher and say you know what are my options do you think i would do honors a better placement for me and maybe that's something that you could look into and switching into it doesn't mean anything bad it just honors is still going to be a challenging course that would just maybe benefit you better as a student i think that's all the time we have for questions in this segment we'll be right back with mr eagle and mr seat all talking about wait our official g p a that comes out our high school is the weighted grade and there will be some colleges that will on weight grades and then utilize their own way of waiting grades and so probably the best example of this is penn state  they will on weight our g p a and then they have a system in which they apply way back in and so i think that they do this sort of where we talked about before the break where a college had mentioned that they see sixty or seventy different ways of calculating a g p a and so that's very difficult for schools especially schools as large as penn state that are going to have a lot of applications they need to create a system that's fair to everyone and so having a way of of their classes so is the truest g p a however it is not giving the student sort of any accolades for having taken a more difficult class which is the whole reason grade in the a p class more weight in the g p a and the colleges look more at the letter grades or more at the courses and selves definitely more at the courses that you're taking on that we touch and it's all really are that if you're going to go into media or communications they want to see that you're taking those courses and i also think it's important to for a lot of wreck you know your teachers are going to talk about you and your letters of wreck of how you are as a student in the classroom so that kind of shows you know and they have this letter grade in my class but this is how they are as a student they're hardworking they have a strong work that work ethic they're dedicated they get their assignments in on time they work very hard so that's kind of going to be a reflection of who you are as a student so that's also something that plays a very important role in the application process same with a counselor letter rack they're going to show you who you are as a person and they're going to take those aspects and put them into that into that letter and then colleges are go college and so everything is within context of what your academic goals are you know if a student were to take all academic classes and get straight a's that doesn't mean that they could apply to any school and get in so they're going to be colleges  you have heard e mail and or a johns hopkins which are looking for very specific things in students and so even if the student had a four point zero if they didn't take the challenging course work which was a prerequisite for those colleges they would accepted so it's not all about the g p a it is really you know thinking about the end in mind what does the student want to accomplish what are their goals and getting into school and then putting them in the best possible position with their classes and their activities and their relationships with their teachers who they have a good letter of recommendation they have a resume and they're volunteering and you want to be a well rounded person when you apply school you know a lot of students are worried about grade inflation  why are they so worried about that and how can that be addressed i think that if this is something that you guys students strongly feel about start to have a strong feeling towards and you want to see a change then be that advocate be the advocate for change and i guess that you know that's sort of a loaded question if you think about your life as a student within a class if how would you feel if sort of a hierarchy of all your grades your teacher said you are doing really well and really well in my class means that you're getting a seventy eight percent but that's a hard earn seventy eight percent and you can you should be proud of that with would you be ok with that when you went home with your parents be ok that you had earned a seventy eight percent and while we would like to think that that is true that is not how it plays out a lot so i think that there is that expectation and that if i check off those boxes that if i do my homework every day that if i complete all for my projects that if i study for my exams that i deserve a nag and i think that's something that schools are always wrestling with and it could be that my best effort when i went to turn in that paper was a c and there's not there's no shame in earning that c but right now there is there is i think that for most students and parents the only acceptable grade is an essay and then every grade below that is unacceptable and so i think then that leads to grade inflation ice and then there's a way this you didn't sorry able to get extra credit or you know if you have classes where you have over one hundred percent how is that possible and so i think then that's extra credit and you're doing extra things and all that is just now  that's inflated and with parent pressure how can that affect students mental health and their stress levels yeah i that's probably you know i'm right there near the top of  where students and stress and anxiety come from and i think that's probably that's difficult to manage i think some you know parents have ed early age set a goal for their that really the communication could be the way to dissipate some of that i think that so often and students will come to school and they'll say well my you know my mom or dad wants me to be an engineer i have to be a doctor because everybody in my family's a doctor i have to do this or i have to do that and and so there isn't a discussion there the stated is that at no point going back to parents and saying you know i'd rather be an art teacher or you know i want to be a sports broadcaster that's something that i really enjoy in school and so i think you know trying to come up with those communication relationships through school can help with some of that so that you're not going toward a goal that you don't want and now you're working hard for an undesired and if people believe that positive reinforcement is the way to go with parents and not like scaring their kids and taking higher classes and it's all it's just important i think it's important to just always be positive because sometimes we may hear negative things and then take those and internalize them so then that causes a little more of a negative feeling or a little more anxiety so i think it's always just important to have a positive attitude toward things and towards classes because there's always you can always better yourself and you can always become a better person so just as long as you're striving towards that and that's really the ultimate goal and i think if you think about your classes here at school i think those classes where you and your peers are working together and there's lots of cheering for each other and positive self talk and positive encouragement those are the classes that you enjoy the most i think if you're doing something to avoid negative consequence then you lose motivation it creates a lot of anxiety because you don't know if you're actually progressing or not you're just avoiding a negative reinforcement that point there a lot of students will say like oh i'm getting a class but it equates to an a in another class is that true they think like that so mathematically it is not true but again it's not when you take an a p class you are not taking it to get the grade you're taking it because that's a subject you really enjoy or that's a subject that you know and a career field that you're pursuing that's why you're taking that class because you want to learn that content you want to be challenged in that way you shouldn't take a class simply because you think you're going to get a v c whatever at the end i would say to advanced placement courses are seen as a college or preparatory course so if you are taking that you should be have the mindset of you know this is something that i'm looking forward to studying after high school and i really want to start learning you know what college is going to look like for me so maybe that's kind of what the mindset you should have when you're taking an a p course too since colleges look at extracurriculars to do you think it be better for students to take like a few a p and honors and like one or two extracurriculars or no extracurricular isn't like all a p and honors so i guess there's no there's not a exact formula you know you need to think about what are the things that i enjoy doing so you're extracurriculars or giving your life some i meant those are things that you do are good stress relays or that you know you just enjoy participating in and your classes again are what is going to help the best prepare you for the future i think it's very individualized to the person you know extracurriculars to someone could mean volunteering outside of school or it could mean a school sponsored club or it could mean a sport and you know someone might be able to take a p courses and volunteer outside of school where i may not want to take an a p course and have been a very involved sport it kind of just depends on the person and what their interests are and what they want to do and why does some support just getting rid of waiting altogether or modifying it so i the the downside of waiting grades is that that time students will have a false sense of of how they are achieving and so  some school districts that have both way grades and ranking because a student has over a four point zero they may think that they're tough quarter of a class or top ten percent of class or what have you and they may not actually be and so forth some students and again depending on what their goal is that they're shooting for may have all a false sense of of their accomplishments  many colleges such as the university of california berkeley reports on the unweighted g p a of all students paula just to get an accurate idea of how much effort this to inputs into a class not just the classes they decided to take this contributes to the argument that grade inflation needs to be controlled all schools including peter's town to school district should require an a for waiting to count this is to make sure the students who put in the work are rewarded to east dress over academic competition and to encourage students do their best to matter what class they're in thank you for