To Potomac School English Teachers and Administrators: The writing lab is failing. It has become the unanimous opinion among all Ninth Graders, and was the point of this project not to help them The time that is being taken away from us such as Conference Period is often very important to a lot of students, and having to sacrifice these all-important opportunities to meet with teachers in exchange for sitting through these 45 minute sessions is simply not a fair trade. It is unfair to use our grade as guinea pigs to see how well the system works. There has to be a better way to teach high schoolers grammar, and the time has come to at least try introducing something new. The number of difficulties we have already come across this year should demonstrate how poorly the system is working. The tiered classroom is not a good environment to be learning; the people in the back can not concentrate or hear clearly, the people in the front are just constantly picked on. As if it was not bad enough as it is, alerting us less than 24 hours before the actual writing lab is unacceptable. Students may have spent days planning with teachers to meet during Conference period, but would now all have to reschedule. The way that students leave the Writing Labs feeling that they have learned very little that they did not already know, demonstrates the inefficiency. Ninth Grade representatives in Student Government will be more than willing to negotiate and find a way to get around Writing Labs, and its important that we now have our voices heard. On behalf of the Ninth Grade Class: end the Writing Labs!