Mental Health in Schools (Synthesis)

It’s no surprise that school can be stressful. There’s so much pressure from almost every angle to do well. Teenagers can be awful to each other. Parents don’t understand this generation. Technology has added another layer of complications. The damaging effects of…

#2 Going Up a Down Escalator

I don’t hate school because

it’s boring

or because my teachers are mean.

I don’t get bullied

and it’s not so challenging that I can’t do it.

College Readiness

The fact that the Olathe School District can ask students to commit to a four year program that shapes their entire high school career blows my mind. How on Earth are 13 year olds supposed to know what they want to do with their lives? Quite frankly, how are 18 year olds supposed to know either…

Why Standards Based Grading Works (Persuasive)

Last year I had one English teacher, who I won’t name, that was widely hated by almost every student that had her. We all understood the fact that we were freshman and weren’t generally the most mature, but she must’ve mixed up freshman with second…

#1 My Experience with School (Memoir)

Growing up, school was the light of my life. I excelled. I wanted to be the absolute best…

Standardized Testing

There are so many different types of students in this world. There are the naturally gifted students, like myself. We barely have to try in school to excel. There’s the students that work their *butts* off to succeed. There are students that need to hear things, and student’s that need to…

Busy Work and Homework

Surprise, surprise: I hate homework. Every student in the world does. But really, I hate busy work, which is what most homework is. Do I really need to copy down the front side of a filled out map to the back side on the blank map? No. That, quite literally, teaches me absolutely nothing.

Real Life Learning

“When am I ever going to use this in real life?”

Never. I will never need to know how to use elementary row operations to find the identity inverse of a matrix. I will never need to know how to tell my principal about my second cousin’s dog in French. I will never need…

Online Schooling

I think there’s a lot of value in in-person school. There’s things you just can’t learn by sitting behind a computer screen. You can’t learn to keep your mouth shut when the annoying kid next to you is making you want to scream. You can’t learn how to work through a challenging class where the…

Summer Break Sux

I’m pale. My foundation shade is the lightest one offered. Summer is hell for me. Legitimate concerns over my health come up from…