For our third action project, we had the really interesting and cool experience of creating our own constitution together. The process began with individually creating our own amendement, using the art of abduction, that changed something about the school we weren’t happy with. After revising these, we all got together at a Haitian restaurant and voted “yay” or “nay” on all our separate amendments after presenting them to the class which eventually led to the creation of our student constitution. I’m really proud of how well we worked together as a group and how we are affectively and thoughtfully our trying to change aspects of our school to improve it. Check out my amendment below and our final student constitution here!
I propose that we get rid of Service and Blogging, two forced classes that aren’t necessarily required and could instead be outside clubs in which role they would be more effective and interesting to those who partook in them.
Result: Service and Blogging are no longer considered required classes.
Rule: Offered as after-school clubs or groups for those who have a specific interest in them.
Case: Service and Blogging are turned into clubs and as a result are more effect because the people taking part in them are much more interested and therefore hard working.
I can offer a personal anecdote on these classes and how I feel they are more or less time fillers in my day. For blogging, I can say I almost always use it as a study hall which isn’t bad, however not useful for what it’s intended to be used for. I can also confidently say my classmates use it the same way. As for service, it often feels like an extra, unnecessary stress that shouldn’t have to be my responsibility if I don’t choose for it to be. Not only that, I think my group has a hard time putting in full effort because it is more of a forced activity and doesn’t particularly interest us. I think both these classes goals are great ways to better GCE however posing them as a forced commitment isn’t going to create the outcome we’re looking for.