Schools

Letter to the Editor: Support Lab Blocks in Marblehead

The following Letter to the Editor was submitted by Hannah Seay.

Dear Mr. Millington and Ms. Perry,

I have been informed of a recent proposal to eliminate extended lab periods at the high school. As a former graduate of Marblehead High School, I kindly ask you to consider the negative impact this will have on a student’s education.

In my time at Marblehead High School I completed Honors Biology, Honors Chemistry, Honors Physics, AP Physics, Marine Biology, and AP Biology (all of the science classes I was able to fit into my schedule). The combination of class time and lab experiences has helped me to achieve 5’s on all of my AP exams, 700’s on SAT subject tests in the sciences, as well as a perfect score on the science and math portion of the ACT. This allowed me to attend Mount Holyoke College with a generous scholarship and a research grant. I am currently a freshman and have been given the honor of being a teaching assistant for the Physics Lab. It has also given me the privilege to work with a professor as a research assistant in both Biology and Physics looking at how ultrasounds can be used to detect cancer cells. None of this would have been possible without the strong lab component of science courses.

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As a science tutor for a large number of high school students, I fully recognize the importance of labs in education. Labs allow the students to collaborate with one another and apply the knowledge they have learned in class. The majority of my students are unable to fully understand the material until they visually experiment with it in a lab. Labs are a huge component to these classes and crucial for a student’s understanding of the subject matter.

It will be virtually impossible for students to understand and complete a lab in one class period. The majority of labs conducted in my science courses were barely able to be completed in one lab period. I can’t count the number of times other students and I would need to stay after to be able to finish.

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I understand your concern about many students not having enough credits to graduate. However, shortening lab blocks is not a beneficial solution. The reason students do not have enough credits is mostly due to the large number of studies students have per semester. I know many students who had two or three studies a year! I assure you that if I was able to take six science classes in my four years at Marblehead High School with lab blocks, students can complete three lab sciences while obtaining the necessary credits to graduate.

If you are truly adamant about having equal time devoted to each class then maybe the schedule system at Marblehead High School needs to be revised. Many highly ranked schools have revised their schedule to include four classes a semester (with the elimination of free periods). Four classes per semester will devote equal time to each subject while increasing class length to efficiently incorporate labs into class time.  

I hope you reach a solution that does not involve the elimination of extended lab blocks.

Thank you,

Hannah Seay


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