AJM MCHS Elizabeth Anne Margulies Glory Ann Dizon December 1, 2013 Term 2

POEM Extra Credit Analysis of the Survey on School Strengths

We chose to ask questions about Math, English, and Science because we wanted to explore more the correlation between the three subjects. We noticed that normally, students who are good in math are usually able to excel in science, as well. Also, more often than not, these students do not consider themselves as capable or competent in the English subject. Since Miriam College High School aims to best develop each student to the extents of their capabilities, we think that it would be an important step to find out if there is really a significant connection between the way the students perceive Math and Science vs. English. This could help the teachers better discover and focus on the strengths of each student. From another point of view, this could also point a flaw in the curriculum of Miriam, and could help MCHS determine what should be done in order to better integrate and overlap the subjects. This should be done so that they do not stand too far apart from one another. Subjects should be related to one another and students should be able to apply skills and lessons learned in one class in a different class. Furthermore, students should be taught to be well rounded even in academics, and should not feel that they cannot excel in math, English, and science all at the same time. STEM subjects should not be so apart from English. After all, English is a language just as math is a language. Out of 81 respondents, 24 students are part of the Pro Ex programs. Out of the 24 ProEx students, 41.67% (10 students) are part of both POES and POEM. This is definitely significant compared to the number of students who are in both Math and English (1) or Science and English (0). From this, we can see a strong connection between being good at math and being good at science. Number of Students 2 3 3 10 1 0 5 ProEx Subject Math Science English Math and Science Math and English Science and English Math, Science and English

From the next few question, we found out that: a. Out of 81 respondents, 41 students have either higher Math and Science grades than English or higher English grades than their Math and Science grades. b. Out of 81 respondents, 42 students found both Math and Science to be harder than English or English to be harder than both Math and Science. Again, we can see a close relationship between math and science and a rather isolated English subject. Other than this, we also wanted to explore the connection between the three subjects and certain activities. We believe that there is a correlation between being able to excel in math and science to logic. Similarly, we believe that there is a correlation between being good at English and the languages to creativity. We found that: The students with either their Math or Science grades being higher than English would rather watch educational channels (NatGeo, Discovery) or join activities based on logic, while the students with a higher grade in English than math or science would rather read or do creative activities. Furthermore, the following table shows the division between logical and creative among the ProEx respondents. It shows that: 9 out of 10 (90%) of the students that are a part of both the Math and Science ProEx subjects consider themselves logical. Number of Students 2 3 3 10 1 0 5 ProEx Subject Math Science English Math and Science Math and English Science and English Math, Science and English Logical 1 2 1 9 1 0 3 Creative 1 1 2 1 0 0 2

This is interesting because it labels the people as one type or another. We believe that in some ways, this is merely due to students giving into stereotypes. We believe that students should aim to think outside of the box. Creativity can definitely be useful in math and science, while English definitely requires logic and applications of science. Since when we graduate, we will be taking what we learned to apply in our lives, we believe that math, science, English (and also the rest of the subjects) are not as important individually compared to what we have learned to do as a whole. Therefore, this survey shows that MCHS students lack in being well rounded and open-minded about taking lessons learned in certain subjects and applying them in other subjects. After all, it is not always going to be about the numbers and formulas.