My Previous High School

I was highly disappointed after I had walked through the doors only to notice that nothing changed. One could say that some things actually became worse. The three main things I had noticed that got worse were, attitude that between the teachers and the students, the condition of the building, and the over-crowdedness.

Before I even agreed to this project, I had known that the attitude between the students and the teachers had gotten much worse. At one point in the year things became so bad that a student hit a teacher on the head with a glass bottle. This disrespect however, did go both ways. There have been many a time when teachers and administrators have sent students to detention simply because the teacher does not agree with something the student had done. I remember one incident in particular in which a student who did not speak English, was being harassed by quite a few English speaking security guards for not wearing his student ID.

During my visit to High Point Sr. High School, I noticed that the building conditions had also become much more unsatisfactory. In many classrooms there were ceiling tiles hanging that were missing all together. I walked up the staircases and I saw that a lot of the ceiling tiles were discolored, graffiti all over, and it did not help matters any that the ceilings were leaking. Many of the classrooms were not air conditioned during the hot days, and they were not heated during the winter. Also many of the windows in the classrooms were broken and could not open or close correctly. The cafeteria was like two different worlds. One side of the cafeteria would be really bright and the other side of the cafeteria would be very dark and almost impossible to see.

The other thing that troubled me about going back to High Point was the over crowdedness. High Point can only hold about 2,100 individuals. That number includes teachers, staff, and students. When I had left High Point there were about 2,600 students, that was not even including the teachers and staff. In each class there was 25-35 students, in rooms that could only seat 25. The over crowdedness became such a problem that ten “temporary” classrooms had to be added. During lunchtime the lunch lines would be so long that most people never got their lunch. In the cafeteria there were never enough tables or chairs so people had to sit on the windowsills.

In conclusion my trip back to High Point High School proved to be disappointing in many ways. I was disappointed because many of the problems I had experienced when I attended just got worse. The issues such as the attitude teachers and students shared for each other, the conditions of the buildings seemed to get worse, and the over crowdedness just grew and grew.