The reason students go to school is fairly straightforward; they want to learn. This should mean that teachers want to teach students and equip them with the knowledge necessary to succeed. However, many teachers at Lowell instead choose to utilize an approach reliant on textbooks, workbooks, and other similar resources instead of their own knowledge. Because of this flawed style of teaching, many devoted students rely on excessive out-of-class research and tutorials on sites like YouTube to compensate for the lack of instruction they receive in class. While there are still many teachers at Lowell who treat teaching with passion and the proper level of care, lots of them can display carelessness towards their classes, which can detrimentally affect the academic success and mental health of students.
While it is common for teachers to use textbooks to assist with lessons, a common issue among teachers is an overreliance on these resources. While it is particularly notable in math classes, this issue is present in various subjects taught at Lowell. Many geometry teachers rely heavily on the standard geometry textbooks, and their lesson plans often consist of doing page after page of the textbook without providing much explanation of the material. This learning method leaves students in an undesirable position, as they are forced to study pages of the books every day without receiving additional instruction or guidance. For students who learn better in more interactive environments, with more teacher-student collaboration, this teaching method is unhelpful and can make the class more difficult than it needs to be.

When teachers don’t provide students with direct instruction or allow them to experiment with new concepts, it can negatively affect the stress levels and workload of the students. As teachers fail to provide students with an adequate amount of useful instruction, students can begin to feel overwhelmed. This is because the amount of content in their classes increases as the year progresses, which consequently leads to a greater amount of misunderstanding. Since they aren’t going to class in a productive learning environment, students can get stressed out about not understanding the topics enough to perform well on exams. To make matters worse, high school students also struggle with reaching out for support when they need it. According to Edutopia, just 40 percent of high school students in the U.S. feel that they have an adult that they can turn to when they are stressed. This feeling of isolation eventually leads to underperforming on assignments and tests, which only worsens their mental health. Despite the seemingly complex nature of this issue, it is fairly safe to say that students would feel more comfortable reaching out to their teachers for help if they felt the presence of their teachers in the classroom more.
The lack of available support can also force students to essentially teach themselves the lessons outside of school, relying on resources such as YouTube and Khan Academy to teach them topics that should be the responsibility of their teachers. While YouTube and other resources are helpful to have for students who want to go above and beyond and get extra guidance outside of the classroom, many students are feeling the need to use it regularly to supplement the lack of instruction on their teachers’ part. Relying on these self-instructional methods can cause students to become overwhelmed and stressed, as they can feel high amounts of pressure to learn materials that their teachers haven’t gone over.
Another issue with this overreliance on workbooks, albeit a smaller one, is that it forces many students to bring large, heavy textbooks to school every day. Some students at Lowell don’t have access to lockers, forcing them to carry around all the materials they need throughout the entirety of their day. Bringing textbooks to class every day can result in students carrying around heavier bags than necessary. To combat this, teachers should have set days where students are required to bring their textbooks, rather than requiring them daily. During the rest of the week, teachers can rely on other teaching methods such as experiments, lectures, and seminars. These teaching methods would be less stressful and more relaxing for students, and would be far more beneficial for their learning, as they would get a balance of learning from the textbooks combined with other methods.
By incorporating different teaching styles into their curriculums, teachers can raise student grades and participation while having an easier time keeping their attention during class. With students more eager to learn and teachers more committed to their work, the classroom environments will see a noticeable improvement. All it takes to get there is for teachers to adapt new lesson plans and implement more variety, rather than always resorting to textbooks to teach their students.