When I was brainstorming about the problems in schools, one thing that came to mind was the students’ stress due to assignments and assessments. I thought about this because I had personally felt stressed before due to the amount of homework we had, and I know that most of the other students have also felt stressed because of the amount of homework we have each night. After researching the stress experienced by high school students, I found a study done by Stanford University’s Challenge Success Program that surveyed 54,000 students, and 76% of the students stated that they often worry about the possibility of not doing well in school. 75% of the students also said that they often feel stressed by their schoolwork, and 72% worried about taking assessments. My solutions to decrease the stress experienced by students were to have dedicated time for homework during class, have assignments that can be easily rescheduled, and have retakes for tests. Having dedicated time during class to work on homework allows students to ask the teacher questions while they are in the same room. Having assignments be easily rescheduled allows students to spread out their assignments and move assignments to days with less work. Allowing test retakes reduces stress on students to constantly be at their best and allows for students to learn from their mistakes and show their understanding of the material.

Steps of the project

1. Brainstorming and researching: coming up with problems with school and doing research
2. Defining the problem: defining the problem and continuing research
3. Ideate Day 1, Day 2: designing solutions to the problem, sharing with teachers and peers, and using feedback to tweak solutions
4. Prototype Day 1, Day 2: prototype how the solutions would be implemented in schools and how they would work
5. Presenting: Presenting our problem and solution and answering questions

One thing that went well with this project was that I could implement most of the solutions easily and effectively. I was able to implement the idea of allowing test retakes and having dedicated time for homework during class to reduce stress. I believe that these solutions to reduce stress on students can be implemented in schools easily. One thing that could have gone better is having a solution to the problem that is easy for both students and teachers to implement and manage. One of my solutions to reduce the stress experienced by students was to have multiple calendars for the teachers that had the dates for their courses’ homework, homework for grade levels, all tests and quizzes, and a calendar for games and other events. Having multiple calendars and keeping up with them may be difficult for the teachers. Another solution that may be difficult for teachers to manage is allowing students to reschedule an assignment and ask for an extension. Allowing students to reschedule assignments and ask for extensions may be difficult for the teachers because they will have to keep up with all of the different assignments that students had asked for an extension.

After working on this project, I learned that students’ stress mostly comes from either homework assignments or taking tests. I also learned the benefits of allowing retakes for tests, like decreasing stress by reducing the pressure on students to always be at their best. I also learned that allowing retakes reduces stress for students with test anxiety because just knowing that a retake is available reduces stress, which allows them to perform better on the initial test, thereby eliminating the need for a retake.

One thing that I noticed while reading my final book was that I was better at reading the book than at the beginning of the year. I did not have to reread sections of the book as much as I did at the beginning of the year. I also believe that I got better at analyzing the book compared to the beginning of the year. I understood the book better while reading compared to when I read my book at the beginning of the year.

The solution that I would recommend the most is allowing retakes for tests because I believe that this can be easily implemented into classrooms. It reduces the amount of stress experienced by students on test days. Students may not always be at their best on test days and having retakes allows students to show that they understood the material and allows students to learn from their mistakes. I would also recommend limiting how many retakes a student can take so that the student will still study for their tests and quizzes. Another solution I would recommend to reduce stress is to have dedicated time at the end of class to start working on homework so that students can ask questions if needed while their teacher is nearby.

I noticed that having dedicated time to start homework was similar to our English III class. Most of the homework we had for the class was work that we had started in class and needed to be completed for homework. This is similar to my solution because they accomplish the same thing: to start working on homework and have the teacher nearby so that students can ask questions if needed.

Today I put in the rest of the information for the problem and I added most of the solution to the presentation. I also found a connection between the book and the presentation. I will be adding more specific examples and more detailed explanation of the solutions.

Today I put my sources into Noodletools to later add to my presentation for the works cited page. I also started working on my presentation. I have started explaining the problem and added data from research about my topic, and I have begun to explain the solution to the problem.

Today in class I took feedback from my teachers and added to my solutions to the problem. I added more specific detail about what will need to be changed or added to our current school. I also added reasons to allow retakes of tests and I continued to think about ways that the solution will be most efficient and effective.

Today in class, I worked on coming up with solutions to the problem I came up with last class. I also research more into how students feel about homework and tests. I also started researching things that can be done to reduce the stress of students.

One thing that many say is a problem in school is the amount and type of homework that is assigned to the students. Spending too much time on homework leads to students experiencing more stress, physical health problems, and having less time for friends, family, and extracurricular activities. Throughout this school year, I had had days where I had lots of homework and some days when I had no homework at all. This meant that I had days when I had multiple hours of homework a night, which sometimes stressed me out because I was unsure if I could finish all of the work on time. I arrived at the problem of having too many homework assignments because I believe that many people either experiences this or have experienced having stress because of having too much homework.

Sources

Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework

Homework Stress: Construct Validation of a Measure

From these sources I learned that most students saw homework and tests as a primary source of stress, and a third of the students in a survery said that getting good grades was the primary source of stress.

In class today, I took the brainstorm from last class and came up with five questions that will help with my research. When I started researching, I had trouble coming up with search terms that would get me the things that I am looking for, but I was able to find some information after searching for a while and trying different search terms. The next step for me will be for me to come up with better search terms in order to find more information on the topics and have more specific information.

In the third quarter, we spent time working on improving our writings. We went through powerpoints that showed us examples of ways to make our introductions and conclusions more interesting. The two presentations about the introduction and the conclusion helped the most. When I write essays, I usually write in ways that follow a formula that I learned when I first wrote essays. My introductions were usually just background information and the thesis, and my conclusions were restatements of the thesis.

When we looked back at one of our writings in class to see places where we could make changes, I noticed that many of my sentences started with the same few words. After changing the beginnings of the sentences, my writing has gotten less repetitive. I also think that I have gotten better at making fewer grammar mistakes and writing less wordy sentences. The infographics have helped me realize that one of the things that I do most is making my sentences wordier. I believe that my writing has improved greatly since the beginning of the year.

This Saturday, we have our first Mu Alpha Theta tournament of this year. Although it will be different from the past years, I am very excited to have a math tournament this year. I am more excited than usual for the Mu Alpha Theta Tournament because we have not been able to have one ever since the pandemic started. The state convention was canceled because of the pandemic, and I think that not having the state convention was one thing that I missed most. The tournament that we have on Saturday will only have three or four schools, but I am still excited to have a tournament in over a year.

Even though doing math on a Saturday may not seem fun, I like going to these tournaments because it helps me realize what I remember and what things I need to study. One of the main reasons I like going to these tournaments is that I have always liked doing math and finding the solution to a problem. When I was in lower school, I could do math and not much of anything else because I was still learning English, but math is only numbers and is universal. I also think that after going to my first math competition in fifth grade, I realized that I really liked doing math and solving problems. I hope that I will be able to do well on Saturday, and I hope that we will be able to more tournaments next year.

Before watching the two videos on deep fakes, I knew that they were used to put people’s faces on other people, and I thought about how the technology has improved. After watching the videos, I learned that they can be used to spread misinformation by making it seem like the actual person is saying things when it is a deep fake with a voice impersonator. One way to spot if a video is a deep fake is by the voice and whether it is something the actual person may say. Another way to spot if a video is a deep fake to see if the face blurs at any point in the video.

I think that deep fakes show how much technology was improved and how much AI can do with just photos of a person’s face. I think that deep fakes can be a useful tool if it is used correctly. Deep fakes can be used to make it seem as though you are talking to someone that is no longer alive. Deep fakes are used for actors that had passed away, like using it in a Star Wars Movie. Although deep fakes can be a useful tool if used correctly, deep fakes can misinform the people who view the videos. An example of this is using deep fakes during an election to make a candidate look bad, which could ruin their chances to win the election. Although there are currently some ways to determine where it is a deep fake, deep fakes are improving, and it will be harder to find out if a video is a deep fake. I think that in the near future, it will become impossible to determine if a video is deep fake just by looking at the video.