Imagine that you are entering your Junior year of high school, and that you have an extra block in your schedule. There is a tutor program, called A+, for students to assist teachers in the classroom (TA) as a way to earn service/tutoring hours, which eventually leads to college payment help and tuition funds. Imagine that if you take advantage of this opportunity, you can pay for part of college, all the while helping teachers AND younger students with their learning experience. Imagine that you have more than enough credits on your plate, you're on track to graduate with honors, but the person in charge of A+ and TA approval is denying your application based solely on the fact that you are not a Senior, claiming that it is the school's policy to only offer such a privilege to members of that year's graduating class.
This became a reality for me recently, when Shelly Sayre (A+ Administrative Assistant to Jeff Rich, A+ Coordinator) denied me a readily available opportunity to earn hours toward benefiting from A+ simply because I'm an underclassman.
There are many reasons why allowing only Seniors to be TAs is a bad policy. The 3 greatest are as follows:
- Any given teacher that really wants the help of a TA (each teacher is only allowed one) may not have any Seniors asking or wanting to be their TA, and would like the option to recruit a younger but capable TA from the underclassmen. (This is true in my case.)
- Any given underclassman wanting to be a TA may technically only need to take one more credit (OR LESS!) as a Senior in order to graduate (again, with honors) because of how many credits they already completed throughout the previous 5 years (7th-11th), even if they're taking only 3 core classes, 3 whole theater classes, and the final required semester each of Personal Finance and P.E. their Junior year (which still leaves room for one more creditless block: TA). (This is also true in my case.)
- Any given underclassmen may actually be more qualified/deserving than some of the Seniors that are out for the same TA position. The grade level you are in should NOT be a determining factor in this kind of situation.
Please sign my petition, and make a change! Tell Shell Sayre (and Jeff Rich) that grade level should not be cause for automatic disqualification from A+ Teacher Assistant benefits. All comments on why you support this cause are appreciated!