Many of these students need visuals to help them understand what they learn, and the Web is an excellent place for them to access those visuals. However, there were not enough desks for all the students, the textbooks were outdated and there were not enough of those either. The one classroom I used leaked when we had a steady rain. There wasn't a day that the police weren't called for some reason. It was impossible for teachers to do their job when the tools necessary to do the job were not available.
Standardized tests can be a disservice to some students.
Many do not have the skills necessary to understand these tests but they must pass them to graduate high school. It is a great source of frustration to many students to be asked to write an essay using critical thinking when they can neither read the question nor write a cohesive sentence. Diane Lebo Wallace '79, a member of the Hood Magazine Editorial Board, is a frequent contributor to the magazine. Following her graduation from Hood, where she double majored in English and art, she earned a master's degree in communications from Syracuse University.