Webassign: To Do or Not To Do

by Nathaniel Rabin, Germantown Friends School '11

           They stare at you, mocking your failure, making you feel like you just caused all of the puppies in the world to be choked to death. Their mere presence provokes swearing, fist-pounding, and momentary insanity in even the most complacent of GFSers. What could possibly have such an effect on the upstanding young men and women produced by GFS? The red Xs on WebAssign, of course.

            WebAssign, created at North Carolina State University in the late 1990’s, is an online homework site used at GFS for several science classes including Advanced Physics and Advanced Chemistry. WebAssign provides the problems, teachers assign them, and the site immediately grades the answers upon submission by the student. And, as I imagine a proper Englishman smoking a pipe would say, “Therein lies the problem.”

            A correct answer warrants a green check mark. A beautiful, glorious, green check mark, like a pat on the head after a job well done. But an incorrect answer gives you the red X, so small and yet so powerful. As if the frustration and shame brought about by the X isn’t enough, WebAssign often feels the need to insult you even further. If your answer is nowhere near the correct answer (a common occurrence in 20-step physics problems) this phrase appears on the screen, in the same harsh red-colored font:

“Your response differs significantly from the correct answer.”

Or sometimes,

“Your response is not within 100% of the correct answer.”

When this pops up, the aforementioned moment of insanity will often lead me to curse at the little man inside the computer for being so mean to me. Teachers using WebAssign can also limit the number of the submissions for each problems, which adds another degree of intensity. James Hall ’11 says, “I knew I was on my last submission - I was sweating I was so nervous.” But, as torturous as the process is, nothing in the academic world quite compares to the feeling of spending 20 minutes on a problem, typing in the answer, and being rewarded with the green check mark. Even better is typing in the answers to the different parts of a multi-step problem and getting a neat column of check marks, like your own little audience giving you a round of applause.

            But the most important aspect of WebAssign is this: it makes people do their homework. If it’s late at night and I only have time to do homework for one class and I have to choose between physics WebAssign and something else, I’m choosing WebAssign 100% of the time. Whereas I would be fine with turning in, say, my Calculus homework having completed all but one problem, I would never do that with WebAssign. There’s something about those red X’s that seems to dare me to finish the assignment, just to get rid of them. And I’m not the only one. Alex Nalle ’11 says, “I spend way more effort on WebAssign than I do on my other homework.” Ian Longhore ’11 agrees, “I always keep working until I finish it. Those green checks are just so satisfying.” As aggravating as WebAssign is, there is no better way of getting students to prepare for class than by this electronic carrot-on-a-stick, the perfect column of green check marks.

Waiting for Superman

By Emma Schmidt '11, Germantown Friends School

If Germantown Friends School’s graduation rate dipped anywhere below 100% administrators would not be happy. Imagine if that rate were only 3%.

Waiting for Superman a documentary directed by David Guggenheim, highlights one high school where only three in a hundred students graduates. The documentary follows five children in Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington D.C. as they struggle through the public school system and try to find alternative modes of schooling.

Daisy, a fifth grader from East Los Angeles, is one of these five children. With her tight ponytail and gap-toothed smile, her life story tugs at the heartstrings of the audience. Daisy’s public middle school is one of the poorest performing schools in the district, but her parents have found another option: KIPP LA Prep, a charter school. KIPP is much bigger and more beautiful than the rundown buildings of her current school.

Much of the film, which won awards at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, documents the inequalities between public and charter schools. Though still funded by public money, charter schools tend to have nicer facilities, longer school days, and most importantly, better teachers. Francisco, a second grader from the Bronx, attends a public school where his teacher will not respond to his mother’s many phone calls and emails. On the other hand, the charter school teachers shown in the film are more energetic, and often younger than their public school counterparts. It is evident throughout the film that charter schools offer a glimmer of hope among the darkness that encloses many public schools.

Waiting for Superman is a well-researched and powerful documentary. The facts support the stories of these five children, and inform the audience that this story is happening in every city in America. The stories are touching and the factual evidence is shocking; the powerful effect of the film bodes well for the change it may bring to America’s school system. Guggenheim didn’t want to highlight his own opinion on charter schools, he just wanted to raise the question, why can’t we have enough great schools?

One problem: there aren’t enough great schools out there; charter schools are just so good that everyone wants to attend them. Daisy from LA enters a lottery to get into KIPP, but there are only ten spots for 135 kids. As pointed out in the film, the probability of getting a spot is about as good as a senior’s chance of getting into Harvard. To Daisy, though, KIPP LA Prep is like Harvard: an opportunity for higher learning that exemplifies everything she doesn’t have at her local public school.

As Daisy waits to hear whether she has gotten a spot at KIPP LA Prep, she crosses each finger over the next, a trick she learned from her father for good luck, and the audience holds their breath that her name is one of the ten called.

It is not.

Daisy bites her lip as her chin quivers and she holds back tears. She will have to stay in a school with unmotivated teachers and wait another year to try again at her dream school. 

“Waiting for Superman” is a moving story that should call to action those who can make a difference in our education system in the United States. KIPP LA Prep shouldn’t be on the level of Harvard in terms of acceptance. Every child has as much right as the next to have a chance to receive a good education.

Making the Grade

by Maya Katalan '11, Germantown Friends School

Ideologically, a GFS education is not governed by grade point average, test scores, and academic rankings. Instead, the GFS brand of learning is more holistic: “we regard education not as training for a particular way of life, but as part of a lifelong process” reads the statement of philosophy on the school’s website. And it is true that a GFS education is not limited to the confines of the class room; from community service days, to your junior project, and even in the weekly silence of the meeting house, personal and intellectual growth is encouraged in a variety of settings.


Yet at the end of senior year lies the real world, a place that can seem stratified and standardized after years at GFS. And as a result, students are self-aware and often competitive, and despite their appreciation for the well-rounded education afforded to them at GFS, sometimes it really does come down to the grade on the end-of-year report card. In such an academically charged environment, complaints of unfair grading and inconsistent curricula are unfortunate, but real. Though the students and the faculty at GFS are generally in sync, the presence of numerous teaching styles and grading methods among teachers often leaves students wondering if their experience in a class is the same as that of their peers.

The resounding answer to this question is no. It is impossible and, further more, absurd to ensure an identical academic experience to each student when most classes are split into sections taught by two or three different teachers. While the students can often be mystified and frustrated by the fact that they got the “hard teacher” and it’s so unfair because so-and-so “never gives A’s,” teachers are quick to object to this sort of attitude.

“The school has a tradition of hiring teachers they trust,” says Jeremy Ross, head of the history department, and while department heads meet regularly to keep the curriculum coherent and reasonably consistent, this trust in the teacher’s capabilities means that there is no need for a strictly mapped curriculum. Ross says that while “ninety to ninety-five percent of the curriculum is the same, teachers have their specialties.” If a teacher is particularly knowledgeable in one facet of the already determined curriculum, for them not to teach students to the extent of their ability would be wrong—“I would be depriving you,” says Ross.

Some departments have a more rigid curriculum defined for their teachers. Gen Nelson, former head of the science department, says that there is a conscious “focus on delivering a comparable curriculum” in the sciences. Ways in which this goal is met include weekly meetings to plan curricula and assignments and swap tests, and the use of the same PowerPoints, labs, and final exams.

Even so, Nelson says, “three different people can make chocolate chip cookies using the same exact recipe and the same exact ingredients, and no matter what they do, at the end of the day, the three batches of cookies won’t taste the same.” This analogy is apparent in the different academic departments school-wide, regardless of the level of accord among the curricula of different teachers; in the words of Nelson, “personality differences can’t be solved.”

As far as grading goes, all teachers are committed to maintaining a fair and transparent system to ensure that students know where their grades are coming from. In the English and history departments, students are given the official rubric that teachers use when grading papers.

Anne Gerbner, head of the English department, says that English teachers of the same course practice grading the same paper and revealed that they are never “more than half a letter grade off.” Teachers are determined to make grading as clear and cohesive a system as possible. It’s accepted, almost inevitable, however, that students will not always agree or be satisfied with their grade and in dealing with this issue, teachers of different departments suggest that students self-advocate. “[GFS students] are consumers of educational services,” Jeremy Ross says, “and as a result [they] should articulate any complaints; managing people in authority is a life-long skill, so speak up.”

As much as teachers try to streamline grades and course curricula, it is widely acknowledged that monotony is not conducive to the intellectually stimulating community GFS hopes to be. Dave Mraz, long-time upper school math teacher, says he embraces the diversity of experiences a GFS student will have as yet another catalyst for personal growth provided by the school.

“By the time you graduate GFS you will have experienced different teaching styles,” Mraz says, “and ultimately, it’s not all about what you learn, but what you learn about yourself through adapting to different situations and a variety of experiences, just like you will in the real world.”