Audrey Blakeman is a teacher responsible for Coding I and II, Networking, and Computer Science (a required course) at Green Hill High School. She is also, unfortunately, a teacher ranging from incompetent to downright harmful to the learning of students.

I am a student in one of her classes, and these are some of the wrongdoings I have witnessed:

• She used artificial intelligence to generate a 50-question practice exam for an industry certification. This test began to repeat questions 21-26 for the entire back half of the exam. A similar incident occurred in her Networking class, in which it repeated after the second question. Many of her "original" assignments are generated with AI, and they are rarely checked. (Additional evidence: the first line of a writing prompt she generated contained the line, "Write an informational paragraph that explains your research for each language. Two Paragraphs." This is an immediately obvious contradiction. Mrs. Blakeman didn't even bother to check the prompt.)

• She attempted to explain how lists work in Python, to little success. A student came up to explain the topic, and there were markedly less students struggling after the student explained it. A student was able to explain one of the most basic concepts better than the teacher was.

• The main program that we use to learn programming, TechSmart, contains slideshows that are intended to be used to teach concepts. They are so easy-to-use that they include a script for the teacher to use. Mrs. Blakeman did not use this critical resource for the entirety of the first semester and a good portion of the second; students were on their own. She does try to explain things on their own, but as previously stated, it's not effective at all. 

• I'll just tell the story of February 3rd. In this 84-minute class, we tried to go over a 27-minute video... but after an hour, we had only gotten to the 22-minute mark, because Mrs. Blakeman repeatedly paused the video to add unnecessary information or just restate it. The video was going over two functions and a special character; believe me, it was not necessary for it to take more than twice as long as intended. After we didn't finish the video, we got into a discussion over how AI works. I would tell you how she thought it worked, but what she said didn't make any coherent sense, and not because she used an excessive amount of technical language. I've written a research paper on how AI works and its flaws, and I do know what I am talking about. Other students demonstrated the same understanding that she lacked. And of course, because we never finished the video, we never got time to finish our daily assignments. For the icing on the cake, she just had two days' worth of assignments due the next day. This is a great encapsulation of why Audrey Blakeman is an ineffective teacher.

• As I briefly mentioned, Mrs. Blakeman tends to go off on unrelated tangents often. These can range from off-topic to downright inappropriate; several separate sources have corroborated that she has previously discussed that she is "okay with bombing the Middle East because they lack the ability to think critically," and recounted a story about how she "was on a boat trip and met a man dressed as Poseidon, who had her lick condiments off of his bare stomach." In fact, at least one of my sources was reluctant to disclose the latter story, stating that it was "disturbing." I should not have to explain why this is inappropriate.

In summary, Audrey Blakeman does not go to proper lengths to make quality assignments, refuses to use the teaching systems given to her, does not appear to know what she is talking about (with students sometimes being able to teach better than she can), and frequently wastes educational time talking about topics irrelevant and sometimes harmful to learning.

If you are student or a parent reading this, I urge you to sign this petition and share it with the appropriate people. If you are an individual with influence at Wilson County Schools or Green Hill High School, I implore you to take the appropriate course of action to remove Audrey Blakeman from her teaching position, whatever that may entail.

Thank you for reading all this way.