A note from Mrs. Davis
The Writing Assessment at BAIS is a decade-old tradition measuring student strengths and weaknesses with written English. The prompts vary from literature-based to more personal reflection questions. This year’s prompt dealt with the trauma of this COVID season and the wisdom gained through their experiences. Students were challenged to identify weaknesses they discovered in themselves during the pandemic. After reflecting, students wrote about new strengths developed which they could carry with them in their educational careers and beyond.
The privilege of reading secondary students’ responses was given to teachers across the disciplines. Teachers from maths to science, ELD to English, history and the arts-each read stacks of student wisdom. The perceptions provided by the students were both honest and candid. In order to share some of their insights, here are a few snippets from the Fall Writing Assessment. Please enjoy:
“My learning environment adjusted and I had to adjust with it.”
“Then I thought, I need to adjust to the situation. The situation won’t adjust to me. I can’t rely on time because we never know what will happen. That was the start of the change….This pandemic taught us to adjust to the situation and keep growing and improving no matter what. There will always be room for improvement in everything. Not only did the pandemic teach us to adjust, it also taught us to be grateful and thankful.”
“Being isolated from my friends for so long made me see how life is far too short to care about the opinions of people who have a negative impact on my life. I became more driven to spend time with the ones who care about me and my well being. Furthermore, I started distancing myself from those who made me question my worth and importance.”
“Another positive habit I developed during COVID is approaching conflict with a curious mindset. By this, I mean that I stopped viewing other people’s words and actions as a direct offense to myself, and started approaching them with a questioning mindset. In essence, I started taking into consideration why the person may have done what they did before accusing them of anything.”
“It helped me to not be prideful but to ask for help.”
“Things get useful once you have mastered it, (and) things get easier once you have practiced a lot.”
“If I cheat, the next test is gonna be super difficult and I won’t understand it. It will also decrease my ability to do good in the future.”
“Part of being lazy comes from having a negative attitude, which I had no shortage of during online learning. It’s so easy to only look at the negative aspects in life and completely overlook the positives. Being in the state of negativity just brought me down even more than I already was at the time. I didn’t want to learn because I’d rather be asleep until noon and I didn’t want to participate because it was much easier to just sit and listen; however, all of this just left me worse off and even more lazy. This negativity was an aspect in my life that I had noticed before the end of the last school year and was something that I absolutely wanted to change. I came into this year with the mindset of wanting to have a positive energy everyday and having a smile on my face in school. While it’s hard to always be positive, I have noticed many major effects of trying to be as positive as I can be when it comes to my learning. Having a positive mindset has helped me to be more excited to learn, which in turn helps me to learn much more. I’ve realized that I really do love all my classes and, for the first time, I genuinely get excited to come to class and learn new things.”
“During COVID a new skill that I learned that I did not think I would learn was the ability to do P.E. with no equipment and no real teacher. It will be really helpful in the future when I don’t have equipment to still be able to be fit.”
“I have grown in my ability to understand the tone of the person I’m chatting with, which is good so that in the future, I won’t get into as many arguments as I might have if I didn’t understand what someone was trying to say.”
“In the end, I just set a screen time limit for myself, so I couldn’t play as much, and I had to do other things, because I couldn’t play.”
“I also learned new tricks for doing art at home that I did not know before. That will help me appreciate art-the beauty that God gave us in the world.”
“One change I realized during this time was that communication was such a crucial part of this online course. If I don’t reach or approach teachers to convey the messages that I want, there is literally no possible way for the teachers to know. Not only that, it is hard for all the teachers to schedule, set, and plan everything if the students don’t communicate.”
“Everything around me was a distraction during online school when I was at home….I wanted to be able to focus in class and get my assignments done quickly, so I went online to look for ideas that would help me focus. I wrote down the ones I thought would work on me and tried one of them everyday. After trying all, I wrote down the ones that helped me stay on task the most. I removed everything from my desk so I couldn’t get distracted. The other strategy I used was to set a timer for 40 minutes then rest for 10 minutes.”
“Having to struggle with something is not always a bad thing. You can always search for the bright side. Just like me, at first I struggled with the sudden change, but it made me realize that it changed my life. It is important to remember that a bad thing isn’t always bad.”
“Last thing that I would like to continue is to read the Bible and meditate on the words of God every single morning before I turn on my laptop and start the day. I rarely miss a day to simply meditate on the Word of God and try to approach God. This has been a grateful and beneficial moment to me because I can refresh my mind whenever I encounter some tough times or difficulties.”
Secondary Students Semester 1 Writing Assessment
Storybook Day!
Elementary students, remember that Wednesday, Nov.24th, is ‘Storybook Day’ for I Love to Read month! Dress up like a character from a book you love!
StuCo News
Hello everyone! The jacket order and payment are due December 10th. Please pay at the BAIS Finance office.
New Club
What: AP Calculus and Algebra 1 Tutoring
Who: 8th Grade, 11 and 12 Grades
When: Wednesday or Friday 3:00 – 3:45 PM
Where: Ms. Priscilla Maria classroom
Cost: Free
For more information please contact Karen at karenlee@baisedu.org or TJ at thanieltanudjaja@baisedu.org
