How does a BLS sophomore’s commute time and ability to access transportation impact their likelihood of participating in after-school activities that would affect their academic success and enhance their educational skills?
Our Mission
We are interested in whether a student’s access to transportation has a large impact on their performance in school. Specifically, we are looking into how a student’s commute influences their ability to participate in extracurricular activities and their stress levels. We want to know whether students are prevented from participating in extracurricular activities because they live in neighborhoods that are far away from their school and do not have the time to participate, or have a complicated and difficult commute. We also want to know whether there is noticeable mental strain due to commuting in regards to school and extracurricular activities associated with school. Taking into account the overall class topic of transportation and our subtopic of education, we decided to look into the impact transportation has on BLS students. We want to explore how access to transportation and commute length play a role in the success BLS students experience both inside and outside of the school day. This includes subtopics such as the variations in stress levels and extracurricular participation among students with different modes of transportation and commute lengths. We also wanted to look into how students organize their school activities by the amount of schoolwork that needs to be done and how the time spent commuting prevents them from pursuing other academic help. We believe in the importance of students getting involved in extracurricular activities and we want to figure out a way to circumvent the restrictions on this involvement. Since transportation takes a big role in students’ lives everyday as they utilize it to get to school, we would like to see how it would affect their overall mood during the day, their stress levels and their participation in other activities.
Our Team
Our team includes six dedicated sophomores who have researched economic inequality in Boston during the past four months. We have interviewed students and adults in Boston to get their views on the subject.