QUEST for future needs to be modified for English Curriculum

By Channing Whitaker | Staff Writer

Having to read two novels in two months with in-class and formal essays for English is manageable. But having to combine multiple QUEST assignments in that two month span puts tremendous stress on many students. While for the English teachers, they also have high levels of stress in terms of having to grade there many papers. In addition, they feel restricted to teaching books because their focus is now trying to breeze by each book instead of discussing between the lines because of QUEST.

This year’s new format has changed for the worse. Because this project is on just constantly doing research, the most important part of this project, which is getting hands on Experience and Service with your social issue and social networking skills, was not put into primary focus this school year despite still being required assignments. Therefore, the Experience and Service needs to have more attention through a senior’s timeline with QUEST to show that each individual is actually tried to make a positive effort toward their social issue. As a result, the idea of QUEST this year being a more research based project made the students become more expressive of how QUEST was this year.

“Balancing QUEST and English got challenging at times because while we were supposed to be working on the 8 page papers, I was also trying to write an essay on a book that we were reading in English class,” senior Priyanka Thakur said. “In class, we definitely needed more time throughout the year for QUEST and regarding the novels we read for English, there also should have been a greater amount of class time for doing that to.”

While senior Anderson Chang stated, “The deadlines were really inconsistent not only with my English teacher, but also with my government teacher and, it was not cool that for English one time, we had a five page essay while having QUEST stuff to do at the same time.”

Just from the points of view from the students regarding QUEST needing to be modified for 12th grade English Curriculum, the change of QUEST needs to be taken into action so that the English curriculum does not become overwhelming for both students and the teachers.