Teacher’s Take on Talos

The creation of Talos, a website that allows students to access a comprehensive overview of their current status at Stuyvesant, including grades, locker information, and textbook data, in June 2018, by Rodda John (’17) has received both positive and negative feedback from Stuyvesant students, who are often very vocal in their complaints about the website’s speed and the lack of transparency about teachers. Perhaps what Talos is most famous—or infamous—for is its new role in program changes. Students’ course requests, Advanced Placement course selections, and schedule changes are now all completed through the website rather than in-person. This process, in particular, has received strong backlash from the student body. What do teachers and administrators think about Talos?

Eric Grossman
Assistant Principal of English

Eric Grossman’s role as both an Assistant Principal (AP) of the English Department and an English teacher himself requires him to be very involved with Talos. Overall, he is very positive about the introduction of the system and all of its assets. “It’s allowed me to want to have a more birds-eye view of what changes students are asking for and why,” Grossman shared. He expressed his approval of having an online system as opposed to an in-person one: “Because it’s online, it makes it really easy for me to see that kids want to take a class [...] I can look online and see their first choice.” As an AP of a department, Grossman also believes that the Talos website provides information that helps him administer program changes in a more equitable manner. He went on to explain how Talos helps him more fairly decide what actions to take when two students are applying for one open seat in a class: Talos allows Grossman to see which student ranked the class as a first choice and which student already got a first choice. “That [information is] useful information for me [...] it allows me to be a little more fair in solving that problem,” he shared.

Grossman expressed the sentiment that Talos presents solutions to many of the issues Stuyvesant previously had when dealing with in-person program changes: the switch to an online system was intended to make the program change process more equitable and time-efficient for all students. “One thing [is] that pre-Talos was really inconsistent. If your counselor had a long line, you wouldn’t get a program change, and if you knew someone in the program office, maybe you would,” he explained. “It eliminates that whole scene we had in the auditorium or the cafeteria, where people had these numbers and then couldn’t get seen and were waiting for hours.” In addition, one mainstream online platform like Talos allows program changes to be understood and processed in a more efficient manner between both guidance counselors and APs. Grossman said, “Often when there were blocks before, it wasn’t clear what step along the way they had happened. Now we can see instantly the AP needs to approve, the counselor needs to approve, or the problem is that the seat was filled, or whatever it is, and we know what's possible and what’s not, and we can kind of fix a lot of jams a lot more quickly.”

Grossman also acknowledged some of Talos’s key features that make it a useful and effective system. “One of the things that is cool and unusual about Talos is having the [...] creator of the site here in the building a lot of the time,” he said. John’s availability throughout the day to make changes or work out kinks in the system quickly and immediately is very beneficial. “[Talos is] completely customizable, and with Rodda John in the building he can make these changes rather quickly, like if we see something that needs to be improved,” he shared. Additionally, Grossman likes the feature that requires students to list the reasons why they’re hoping to make a certain program change. “It kind of weeds out the students who [...] don’t even know why they want a change, just somebody said something and they think that they need a change… but being forced to articulate it is, one, useful for students, and two, it's a way for my colleagues and me to kind of sift through the legitimacy of the request,” he explained. “And sure, yes, students can make up stories, and I can’t swear that nobody’s ever pulled one over on me, but I think I have a pretty good sense of what’s authentic and what isn’t.” Grossman stressed that this key feature of Talos that the communication between students and the administration goes both ways: counselors and APs are also required to list why a student may not be getting a request approved: “[APs and counselors] also are told to list a reason, like when a student gets denied a change, we want them to see the reason why they are not getting that program change, and they can see that all happening [on Talos],” he said.

Overall, Grossman had mainly positive things to say about Talos. “Really the transparency of the system is just far more fair and equitable distribution of classes. It's a way for programming to be done in a more organized format,” he concluded. And while Grossman recognizes and understands the basis of students’ frustrations with the system and under, he stressed that “any system [...] is an imperfect system by definition.”

Dina Ingram
Director of Family Engagement

Students most likely know Director of Family Engagement Dina Ingram from her emails. However, she also works alongside John, and expressed similarly positive views to Grossman regarding Talos. She said, “It’s completely customizable, and [...] with Rodda John in the building he can make these changes rather quickly [...] if we see something that needs to be improved.” Ingram also supported Grossman’s idea that Talos made programming more equitable “because the APs and the counselors [...] can see why somebody wants a change, but they also are told to list a reason [...] when a student gets denied a change.” Despite students’ concerns, Talos makes programming more convenient for everyone. “Before, when you made choices for classes only the program office could see your choices, so the APs and counselors didn’t know what your first, second, or third choice was. [Now] everyone can see exactly what you listed as all of your choices for all of your subjects, and it’s all centralized in one place.”