As a student here, I personally dislike it due to the fact it really only cares about football,…read morehence band and cheerleading because they're associated with football games. Sure this school has a history with footballs wins, but it doesn't mean neglecting your other clubs and activities. Sometimes they set aside class time to attend an awarding ceremony in the gym to congratulate football players that are graduating or getting money, and it always last for about an hour. This year they started using AI to make posters instead of just consulting the art teacher to request assignments associated with school spirit, they're already neglecting their art program anyways, which I'lll get to later. I told a teacher that I didn't like the use of AI for a yellow bear in a football shirt with muscles in the classic big top build and short legs next to a hip hop studio station looking things, and said teacher told me "Why don't you just go to a different school?". Look, I didn't even want to go to this school and it's not like I can leave, but you shouldn't tell a student, especially a P-TECH student to leave this school because they don't like the staff using AI to make school posters when school spirit has and should always be human-made and expressed. On top of back, back to the neglected art topic, if I'm not mistaken SOC is paired up with Mountain View which I believe is a college very passionate with art. I had a tour of which I hope was the same school, and they had a whole hallway to show case art, a pottery room, there was even an Alice In Wonderland theater going on that friday. It's ironic that SOC is using AI imaging, one of the top things fighting artists, while being allegedly paired with an art college, not to mention this college is the reason the P-TECH program is relatively there and functioning in SOC. On top of that, the P-TECH majors there at the time I'm writing this is Personal Computering, Electrical Technology, Kinesiology(for some reason, no shame to it it's just a little absurd to me), and one related to piloting. Notice how there isn't an Art related major? I initially figured majors were a difficult process to have when being a P-TECH high school so I asked a P-TECH counselors why despite being paired with a college that has a passionate art reputation, we have no art majors, she gave me an explanation I understood, but ove explained it a lot that I didn't understand anymore. I told why I didn't understand, and she just told me she overexplained to make sure the ones she's talking to understands, which also didn't make sense to me because she didn't really try to undermine her overexplaining, and the conversation was going on much longer than I expected it to, mostly due to the overexplaining. This school also caused me a lot of stress socially wise. The work there is fine, it's just the classmates and other students I had along with a good chunk of the teachers that made me want to rebel my reputation of a being the obedient, gifted, over-achieving kid. I feel it now despite it only being a month in this school year as a Sophomore. Also, same teacher that told me to go to a different school, she does this thing where she has podiums for different class periods and she has growth goals. I understand that the growth goals aren't of her control, which is why I'm more commenting on the district right now but she's still in relevance. Nevertheless, I don't think a competitive circumstance will help kids do better performance wise. Sure, some poeple get that overzealous thrill, but many other people would feel pressured and may not do their best as a result, or others might shut down entirely. Just saying, people experience expectations very differently, and I find that her classroom system, which is common but she mentions the podium stuff more often than any teacher I had, isn't a 100% guaranteed boost one-size-fits-all. In addition to growth goals, I don't find them very helpful either. Sure, they just be there to help students know what grades are considered an improvement, but the same teacher tells us that we should always be performing above our growth goal. Take, for example, my growth goal, which is a 94. If you think about it, that menas I can only miss one or no questions on every assignment, maybe two questions if I'm lucky, and that isn't healthy. No kid should be expected to perform almost perfect grades on every classwork given to them just because of a score. No human, especially teenagers and children, are robots. We can't ingrave mistakes in our memories and smoothly answer questions and meet high standards. Humans are flawed creatures and realistically make mistakes, but that doesn't make you stupid or intelligent, let alone unfit for a progam like P-TECH, it just makes you imperfect, and the concept of perfect is already an impossible standard, so don't make someone obsess over it because its only gonna cause burn-out and low self-esteem. If only this school acknowledged that
