Original Stories

What Do I Think About School

This was a prompt from one of my classes. I still stand by what I said almost a year ago.

I think that school is a place where we learn about the world and where we formourselves as people, and also where we make a new family and home for ourselves. School is anamazing place. I don't think a lot of people my age understand the importance of school and howit affects our future. I know I don't always have the best grades or the best view of things, but Ido understand that it's crucial to my life, even if I don't like it. School is also a lot of precioustime we can't take back if it's wasted.

But school is also really hard. There's a lot of things we have to take in, and sometimesthere are students who don't understand what's being pushed through our heads. We're givenhomework we don't understand, and we don't get a chance to help ourselves because there's noteacher to guide us at home, and usually our parents don't know what we're being taught. We'retold not to say "It's too hard," but sometimes it might be and it's hard to speak up because we'rescared of being outed or wronged. There's also a lot of stress and balancing we have to do, andnot everything we feel has to do with things like hormones and "teenage anxiety." It's not alwaystemporary, and sometimes it's life changing, and not everyone understands that. There could besituations at home teacher's aren't aware of. There could be on-campus problems people don'tknow about. It's a lot for us to handle, and because we're so young, we don't know what to doand we'll keep making mistakes without the proper help we need.

I think school should be more about helping us grow as individuals just as much as it isfor academics. Instead of giving us more work and less freedom, we should be allowed to exploreour strengths and weaknesses and not have to feel bad about them because other people arehigher up on a stupid arbitrary scale. Our grades shouldn't be allowed to define us. Just becausea student hardly ever comes or doesn't work or turn stuff in doesn't make them stupid. Theycould have all the answers they need and just be going through internalized oppression and feelthe need to not work. Or maybe not working is a call for help. It could simply be saying, "I needyour attention and guidance," because for whatever reason, that student is struggling to talk to ateacher openly. Or maybe some teachers need to be a little open-minded, because some of thestudents they're tired of dealing with are the ones that need their help the most.