BY KARRY KIM ‘25
For every third form student, after school meetings on Saturday mornings, it was a weekly routine to head to their Third Form Core classes. To give a short introduction to what the third form core classes are: each class, made up of one teacher and about ten students in each class, ran seven classes from September 18th until November 13th. The major themes of the Third Form Core classes were mindfulness and identity. Most of the classes were held in classrooms, with the structure of journaling prompts with the general theme of identity and having discussions later on in the class. As a long term project, all Third Form Core classes participated in creating a community garden, where classes rotated from week to week with the role of raking and spading the gardening area. Towards the end of the course and as a final assessment, students also created drawings and videos showing their identity. These activities and classes listed above were held with the initiative of “[being] introduced to the tools that are essential for you(Third Formers) to thrive at St. Mark's and beyond” (Course Description). However, despite this ideal goal of getting ready to ‘thrive’ at St. Mark’s, many freshmen students expressed negative opinions about the class.
Community Garden in progress
One of the most dominant reasons why the course was not enjoyable was because the class was not informative. “I feel like I haven’t learned much from the classes. Learning about ourselves and our identity was very redundant from what we have done in TGS, and although it was nice going outside to garden, I did not understand the purpose of building a community garden. The class materials were also all over the place, jumping from our identity to study skills, gardening, and college application” (Rory Hutchins 25’). Students also suggest that the discussion prompts that heavily focused on abstract concepts such as identity and mindfulness made the discussions itself very challenging while not being practically helpful. “I think I do not have enough experiences yet to determine my identity. However, the course was constantly asking who I was and expecting me to be a unique person, which stressed me out. A lot of other people felt the same way too, which made the discussions upon these topics non informative and very redundant. Discussions on identity basically turned into telling classmates where they were born and raised and listing the activities(athletics) that people were doing at school” (Anonymous). “The questions and discussions that seemed like they were meant to target mindfulness, such as ‘Define Mindfulness’ or ‘Write down all the things you see around you’ also weren't helpful with mindfulness” (Anonymous).
Another prevalent reason was that feedback was not taken in actively. “I tried to tell my Saturday class teacher about why the activities were not helpful, but my teacher simply told me to talk to Ms. Nicks and Ms. Killeen, since they were the ones who were planning the course. This clearly did not work for me because I knew neither of those teachers and I couldn’t just randomly go and talk to them” (Anonymous).
Students also say that class discussions were not productive, since people were reluctant to participate. “I sometimes felt awkward sharing my personal stories because the people in class were not close to each other. Everyone was just very quiet and not engaging with the discussions held in class. It seemed like everyone was sleepy and bored, even my teacher” (Anonymous). Many students suggest that the schedule contributed to making everyone so tired and bored. “The class running for two hours and thirty minutes straight made me very tired, along with the fact that it was Saturday mornings when classes were held. It felt as though the class was everlasting. Although there were breaks, the break times were given at very irregular and unplanned times, making the class seem like an array of never-ending activities instead of a well planned course” (Anonymous).
Although students generally expressed negative opinions about the Third Form Core course, some activities gained positive feedback. “I enjoyed the Drop Everything and Read activity, where my class went to the library to read any book they like for 30 minutes. It’s been a long time since I sat down and read a book that isn’t for school” (Rachel Goldberg 25’). “While talking about meditation, I learned an effective meditation method from one of my classmates” (Anonymous).
While freshmen were struggling to make their way in the Third From Core class, the teachers were also struggling to make the course a pleasant experience for the students. According to Ms. Killeen, who planned the course along with Ms. Nicks, there was a desire to target mindfulness, community and equity, identity, adding on to TGS lessons, learning study skills, skills that build up to the Lion Term project in the Third Form Core classes. The challenge was to fit all these values into seven 2.5 hour classes. The community garden was made with the purpose of spending time outside, creating something that lasts for the community and contributes to St. Mark’s, and learning to appreciate our school faculties by experiencing the hard work that the faculty do for our school every day.
There were some challenges in planning the course. She added that the transition from last year’s Saturday classes, which was reduced to about an hour each week, made the difficulty in scheduling and making the class effective. Another challenge was that not any feedback was given to her while the course was running, and since people’s experiences in mindfulness and identity largely differ according to different groups of people involved. She had no idea what people thought about the course. “Usually, I ask my students in my classes, ‘Did that work, or not?’ after a lesson and that is how I get an idea of how my classes are going, (but because for most of the classes were run by other teachers,) I did not have a chance to ask my students for feedback” (Ms. Killeen).
According to the interviews of third-form students who participated in the Third Form Core course and Ms. Killeen, who planned the course, each group had their own struggles in navigating throughout the class. The two groups’ common difficulty with honest feedback creates a guideline for what future Third Form Core classes should look like, and what we should avoid as teachers and students as a whole.