I don't know where to start.
After reviewing all the other reviews, I really start to wonder whats in the drinking water here at Lawson Middle School. When I entered the sixth grade, I was made to believe that this school offered some academic hope. Walking into class, I believed that the teachers had proper credentials to teach us subject matter. But, instead, the school uses the money on televised announcements instead of intercom. Students waste 15 minutes every morning watching students and teachers disproving Darwin's theory of evolution. Clearly, we haven't evolved. Students pay more attention to the pointless announcements, where teachers act like they're actually using time wisely and make the poor kids who come on the announcements feel like they're doing something useful with their lives. Brainwashing those kids is productive in their minds, I guess.
Some teachers are far too strict, other teachers just act like they're geniuses think they're actually teaching the real thing, and some teachers are just there. They offer so called electives to the students. Complete junk and a waste of money. "Exploratory wheel" - three trimesters of junk that has great sounding class names but in reality has no substance. "Technology" means making PowerPoint presentations and woodwork means gluing wood together and waiting for it to dry. I heard that they FINALLY offer languages, but even this is in some sort of the lottery basis. Obviously the administration acts like this is some sort of great achievement that should go down in the books, when in reality this should have been something offered from the start. Don't get me started on the biggest waste of time called "SWAT+". They advertised this class as some sort of tech support and advanced tech learning, when in fact all we did was design candy bar wrappers on Word and make useless videos on iMovie. They also used us as child labor to create some worthless portfolios on wordpress for the entire school.
This portfolio thing itself was another waste of time. We had to present "Me Changing" to random people from our community who could clearly care less about the time we wasted at this school.
Advisory. Too much to talk about. In my days, we had worthless "Go Videos" trying to teach us about "win win" and "lose lose" situations with worthless and disappointing videos. In fact, those videos themselves are lose-lose situations. Advisory was the most worthless waste of time I've ever had. Don't remember one damn thing from that "class" or whatever its made out to be.
Color clashes are just another way to waste money on things other than education. If you want a lesson in desperation, just attend one of these. It's a bunch of kids running around the gym while the rest of kids are stufffed into that tiny excuse for an auditorium, while shouting some nonsense about their class colors. The eighth graders are treated like guests of honor - they get to sit on the bleachers! What an honor, sitting comfortably during that hour of nonsense.
They advertise their amazing facilities to the poor incoming sixth graders. They offer a "rock climbing" wall and a "cardio room". The cardio room has a PlayStation with Dance Dance Revolution. They can't afford real facilities so they make students dance with a gaming consoles. Obviously the kids love it, but looking back it's just an act of desperation on the part of the school. Apparently, they try and make the kids play golf now - I have no idea what the administration is up to.
The administration also has nothing better to do with their time. They call students into the office to give them trash duty for the most pointless things, such as throwing a bottle to one another. I can't count the number of times I've been called into the office for the stupidest things. The administration obviously loves to hand out trash duties instead of handing out an education.
I could keep going, but I don't want to give this school the satisfaction of wasting even more of my time. Don't be fooled by it's API score, just stay away. If you don't heed this advice, then don't blame me when your child comes home with their hair painted blue or red or yellow or green over some worthless color clash rally. You've been warned. read more