Four Steps to a Better Stuy

1. Shorten the School Day

Eighty-one percent of seniors surveyed earlier this year stated that they got less than seven hours of sleep a school night, and over 40 percent got less than six hours. That’s far below the eight to 10 recommended for teenagers by the National Sleep Foundation. Taking into consideration the hours of homework, tests, and extracurriculars that students contend with, lack of sleep can be significantly detrimental to the mental health and academic performance of students.

Stuyvesant students come from all over the city and many experience commutes as long as two hours hampered by frequent train delays. However, most view the long commute as simply one of the sacrifices they have had to make in order to attend Stuyvesant. The majority of the student body wakes up at around 6 a.m. in order to get to school by its 8 a.m. start time. For context, the average New Yorker wakes up nearly two hours later at 7:47 a.m.

The length of student commutes is often left unaccounted for by administrators. Some teachers dock grades based on lateness alone, and others refuse to recognize train delays as an excuse. Those who have P.E. first period are locked out of the locker room and marked as unprepared if they arrive after the start bell.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine states that schools should start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. to allow teenagers to wake up at the optimal time for academic activity. With a modified schedule, this can be possible. Docking two minutes from each class period and omitting the morning announcements (which no one heeds anyway) adds up to 24 minutes. Shortening the time between classes to four minutes can increase extra time to 30 minutes.

2. Require Teachers to Teach Both Honors and Non-Honors, Underclassmen and Upperclassmen

Each year, a few lucky students have the opportunity to take classes with teachers who are considered the top of their department because of their intellectual achievements or the quality of their teaching. These classes are almost always honors-level courses that are only offered to the top students in each field. While these students are given an amazing opportunity and almost always take advantage of what their similarly high-achieving teachers have to offer, other lower-achieving students are left with weaker teachers.

This system of good students getting good teachers creates an academic trend of tracking, where students who get lucky early are then given the chance to develop their skills in that area and thus also take honors courses in the future. The other students, who have weaker teachers in their introductory courses, often struggle to gain a hold of the content and thus cannot take honors classes in the future.

Instead of this system of tracking, teachers should be more evenly distributed across departments. High achieving teachers should be required to teach some standard courses, in addition to teaching honors courses. Honors courses should still be taught by strong teachers, but the very best of Stuyvesant’s teachers should not be simply allowed to teach honors courses and nothing else.

Teachers should also not be able to limit their course load to junior and senior classes. Introductory level classes, such as Global I and geometry, should also be taught by stronger teachers, who can give students the bases they will use later in their academic careers. Weaker teachers should be distributed across the grade levels, where they can do less damage.

Thus, department Assistant Principals should require each teacher to teach one upper-level (junior, senior, or honors) course, and one lower-level (freshman, sophomore, or non-honors) course when allocating classes.

3. Make Programming More Flexible

Upperclassmen should have more control over their own schedules, as most juniors and seniors already have a sense of which classes they need and want to pursue their desired career paths. For example, according to the New York State Higher Education Services Corporation, physics is not a required course in order to graduate with a New York State Regents diploma. The only requirement is passing one Regents science exam. Students should also be able to take classes such as health and drafting during their freshman year or over the summer, in order to free up periods as upperclassmen so that they can make better use of their last few years. This is something that the school has already started experimenting with.

Another option is including more interdisciplinary classes for students who are weaker in certain fields. Physics, for instance, is mandatory for all students, but as of this year, all classes are taught at the honors level. This is an unnecessarily high standard, especially for students who are not strong in the sciences and can better devote their time, attention, and talent to classes in other fields. Taking interdisciplinary classes that focus more on a holistic view of all three core sciences, or math classes with a stronger focus on reasoning rather than calculation, can offer a healthy medium.

4. Get Rid of the Stuyvesant Diploma

To obtain a Stuyvesant-endorsed diploma, students must take a number of classes that are mostly in STEM fields not required by the DOE. Drafting, for example, is an outdated and time-consuming class that serves little purpose for students not looking to go into architecture. While there is a clear rationale for requiring underclassmen to gain exposure to various fields, classes like drafting, at least in its current form, merely add to the workload of already overworked students. Upperclassmen in particular, who already have a sense of their interests, should not be required to take such technical and niche classes.

Furthermore, the fact that a “Stuyvesant-endorsed diploma,” which is just a diploma with a sticker slapped onto it, even exists is a testament to the elitism and emphasis on arbitrary measures of achievement—as opposed to emphasis on learning—that exist at Stuyvesant. Contrary to its intention of pushing students to take more classes, all the diploma fosters is a celebration of our own perceived excellence because we took a few classes that we didn’t want to. If Stuyvesant students are really the cream of the crop, they should not need to be motivated, validated, or confined by a sticker.