There are few experiences universally shared by Hayfield’s student body. One I feel comes pretty close is the sense of collective dread at the announcement that a SOAR teacher had to play an SR&R video. These videos seem to deflate classrooms like air from a popped balloon. They drain the energy from classrooms, as they put students to sleep and cause those left awake scrambling to find something, anything, else to do. Even many teachers seem to malign having to play, then sit through, the boring, monotonous, grating videos. These reactions, while understandable given the quality of SR&R videos, signal that something isn’t right. They signal that something needs to change.
SR&R, as a phrase, has been so tainted by its association with the downright bad way in which it is taught that many forget what it actually means. Student rights and responsibilities, the duties and protections students have while attending FCPS schools. Understanding SR&R is critically important to developing a stronger community. As students, knowing both what is expected of us and what we can expect from our educators enables us to better find our place within our schools and develop more positive collaboration with our educators and other school staff. When everyone has a firm understanding of what they need to be doing, schools run smoother with fewer interruptions, meaning greater effort and focus can be given to actual learning. Ideally, SR&R education would tell students what they know quickly and effectively in order to bring about these positive results. However, as we well know, the current state of SR&R education is far from ideal.
The videos which are used to teach students about SR&R are about as low quality as one could possibly imagine. The animation is stiff and flat. The voice acting is of varying quality and always interspaced by strange pauses. The content itself is presented as boringly as it possibly could be, with a narrator simply extolling to students things they already know. Now, by no means am I hoping for some sort of award winning short film, but the current state of how the SR&R is presented reflects a disconnect between FCPS and its schools. FCPS wants its students to understand their rights and responsibilities, but poorly made videos don’t reflect that. It seems like FCPS itself doesn’t care, so why should anyone else? By investing a little more time, effort, and funding, higher quality educational tools could be created which more effectively teach the fundamentals of the SR&R without putting classes to sleep.
In improving the quality of the videos used to teach SR&R, FCPS would be able to bridge the divide between their goals and what individual student bodies need. Classes wouldn’t be put to sleep by how the content is taught, teachers wouldn’t be so frustrated with having to play them, and FCPS as a whole wouldn’t struggle with so many SR&R violations. Quick, effective, and engaging overviews of the key points of student rights and responsibilities would be so much more beneficial to everyone in FCPS. The district even has systems in place to workshop and develop more effective videos. FCPS is also filled with plenty of talented people. There are students and staff passionate about art and animation who FCPS could work with and use their skills to help create these higher quality videos. They could also gather focus groups or conduct studies to get detailed feedback from FCPS students and staff on what needs to change. FCPS already has the means to establish better SR&R education, now it is simply a matter of using them to actually implement changes. I hope that someday soon we will see these changes made, and that SR&R education can become the pillar of instructional time and the development of healthier school communities which it can, and needs, to be.
