July 2, 2024
To Trip or Not to Trip?
By John Myers
By Reina Copeland
The bustling halls of the Urban Assembly Academy of Government and Law, AGL for short, are illuminated with the chatter of students who trudge slowly to class. The small yet diverse student body begins to slowly divide over conflict. The problem is the upperclassmen believe the freshmen are being prioritized over them when school trips come into play.
Since the start of the 2023-24 school year, upperclassmen have complained about the number of trips the freshman class has been receiving. From college trips which were not extended to the junior class, to fun trips to Alley Pond where freshmen ziplined and had fun with each other. Many compare this treatment to the favoritism that the house of Gryffindor gets in the movie series Harry Potter. Madison Lewis is a junior at AGL. Lewis exclaimed, “It is pretty clear that each freshman class is prioritized during trips and fun activities. But being a junior this year really helped me see this fact. Why are the freshmen going on college trips before us? We hype the college process up and the difficulty of junior year, yet where is the aid for the college process and why is a part of it going to underclassmen?”
Many students agree with Madison’s statements as well as some of the teachers. Tameka Blake, a ninth and tenth grade teacher at the school commented, “With the ninth graders having so many trips we see the imbalance of the level they should be at vs. the life they are at currently. The more they miss class time the more they miss valuable lessons. Many of them are taking Regents Exams for the first time. How are we as teachers supposed to aid students when they aren’t here to actively learn and be prepared for the next steps of high school?” It shows within teachers and other grades that resentment has been caused due to the disparities in trip distribution, and just how much the freshmen are out of school. However, the trips don’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Many of the freshmen see the trips as being a break from the stress of starting high school.
When asked, Ashley Autumn, a current freshman, had this to say. “The trips for me are a break and introduction of what high school would be like. The expectations of high school are not met once you get here. It is not all like High School Musical™ or any high school movie. The trips are like a break from it all.” When asked how she felt, about the feelings of other grades and teachers, Ashley responded with “I can’t exactly deny their feelings, however, from the viewpoint of a freshman the trips feel needed. Everything is a lot right now and we are learning so much at once it is good to have a break every once in a while.”
There are a lot of questions students and staff have. Some of them are the lack of awareness on the Department of Education’s part that allows students to be rewarded with so many trips even if they have no preparation and might be behind where they should be? Are trip coordinators not distributing the trips fairly? Do students just have too much entitlement to the reward system of trips? Is it society and schools for making trips as a reward system that are at fault? Based on this writer’s research, we find a lot of the answers to these questions are negative. Trips are used to reel kids into being perfect students and good students easily go unnoticed. With movie tickets as rewards for chronically absent kids who come to school, and the allocation of a lot of these trips’ funds going towards freshman trips to make sure they stay in school. School systems like New York City feel the need to reward minimal positive actions by categorically bad students because student attendance can make or break schools. Schools get funding based on student attendance and as attendance gets worse at a school, so does the funding. This eventually forces schools to close. AGL is a small school located on the Lower East Side and borders Chinatown, and tensions are running high.
