The article, "At Crossland, Some Crossed Wires" from the Washington Post, discusses the problems that one student has with her pre-college schedule objectives. The school counselor, who would have normally helped her find a solution to her history class problem, was already overwhelmed with his allotment of 300 students in a school of 1500 students. According to him, a solution could have been worked out earlier and he "wished Houston had come to see him sooner" (Mathews 1). Jamieka Houston did send a note to the counselor the very first day of class to request a solution. A needed physics course conflicted with the AP history class so there seemed to be no solution to Houston's dilemma at such short notice. Counselors from other schools said that "a student with a course conflict like Houston's would have been called before school started and given a chance to work out a solution" (1).
My immediate reaction to Jamieka Houston's situation was that the school counselor did not try hard enough to solve this problem, specifically "there was no other physics class she could switched to conveniently" (1). Convenient or not, Jamieka did send a note the first day of class in regards to the problem; he should have contacted her within the week. On the other hand, Jamieka could have been more proactive in contacting him when he did not get back to her. Yet, being a high school junior and not a college junior she had, up until this point, trusted the adults in the school system to look out for her (and other students') best interests.
After reading through the material a second time, I realized that her history teacher could also have been more creative and proactive in helping to come up with a solution for Jamieka. The teacher could have worked together with the administration and/or the counselor and set Jamieka up as an independent study student within the regular history class รป assigning Jamieka the same readings, timetab...