A Better High School               

Before I got to high school, I had no idea what it was about. I thought it was just an extension of middle school. That you would learn, meet people, and go home. That is true, but no one can prepare you for the things you have to deal with in high school. The American education system needs to be changed, and here is why.

Having just completed my sophomore year in high school, I had to take Chemistry, as is required to graduate. I did fairly well in the class, and overall, I liked the teacher. The only thing that bugged me was that the teacher would get angry with us and shout at the top of his lungs that he ‘already has his piece of paper and doesn’t need to be here’. That would get to me for some reason, and back then, I didn’t know why. After re-playing that conversation in my head a few times, I realized what he was saying. He’s not here for us. He’s not here because he loves teaching, or loves Chemistry. He’s here because he needs a job. That hit home. My parents always tell me that the teachers are there for me, for my education. But what happens when they aren’t? I don’t like the idea of having a teacher who teaches me because he has to. I would rather have a teacher who teaches me because he loves teaching. When high schools such as mine are hiring, they should do a thorough interview of the adults. Of course they will say that they love to teach, but there should be required proof. Teachers who are applying for job should have letters of recommendation from not only other teachers, but students as well. These letters should talk about teaching style as well as how much the teacher is committed to teaching, not to getting paid. If this happened, students would feel better about the teachers. Of course the teachers would get angry every now and then, that is inevitable. But knowing that there are teachers that are teaching you because they love teaching and care about your education helps you learn better and feel good about learning.

In schools all over America, no amount of money is enough money. Even though our school has enough money to roll out huge speakers and play music sometimes, we still need more money. We still have to sell Sally Foster items and cookies and See’s Candies. But how much money does that really bring in, and where does it go? Our school just hands us these packets and tells us to go and sell as much as you can. Only in the music classes do we know what that money goes towards. It goes towards new instruments, new field trips, and new music. But when we sell 100 Sally Foster items, where does that money go, and in what way does it benefit our education? Being in 10th grade, my parents get annoyed when I tell them that I have something else to sell, some other cookie or pizza discount card. And who can blame them? They always say that they’d be happy to donate to the school, but they don’t want candy or cookies or pizza. And I started to think that it wasn’t such a bad idea. Why not tell us where the money goes and ask us for donations, instead of offering us chocolate? Rather than giving us a big envelope filled with all kinds of flyers and cookie types, why not have checks ready that say ‘help our school buy more paper with $5’, ‘help us fix our biology equipment with $10’, ‘help us by new overheads with $20’, ‘help us fix our computers with $25’, and ‘help us buy the new Smart Board Software with $50’? That way parents can choose how much they want to donate, and can see exactly what it goes to. That way, there would be no stress about who sold the most cookies. It saves students and parents a headache and raises money for the school. Just imagine, no more cookie dough or Sally Foster, just raising money for what you need to get your education.

Another thing that needs work is the school education system itself. There should be no reason that children in america get Ds and Fs in school in a country that requires a certain amount of education for jobs and daily life. I believe that if a student is getting below a C in their classes, then the teacher has failed them. It should be the responsibility of the teacher to sit down at the end of the day and see who is passing and who is failing the class. The students who are failing should be given an opportunity to redeem themselves at after school or weekend class sessions. The teacher should sit down with each student and try explaining the work in different ways, ask questions, find out the process that the student used, because the answer doesn’t matter if the process is wrong. There was a boy in my Algebra II class this past year. He would always complain to me that he just didn’t get the work; that he’s just that dumb, and he fails at everything he tries. That was the saddest thing that I have ever heard, coming from a junior in Algebra II. The teacher knew he was failing, but when we would get our tests back, she would tell the people with bad grades to ask the people who got good grades on the test. What student would do that? I went to a tutoring class after school with another student, worse, one that I knew. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life, trying to explain to another student who is far more advanced in math than I am, why I was having trouble with Algebra II; why I couldn’t do this ‘simple’ problem. I never went back again. When I talked to the teacher about my test, she helped me with a few problems, but then had to leave. The few that she helped me with made me feel a lot better, because I know that she’s used to teaching the same thing over and over again in different ways without judging you. Had there been an after school program with her, I would have went every day, but since there wasn’t, I had to resort to decoding the Algebra II textbook and the internet for most of my questions, and asking my teacher for help when she wasn’t busy doing something else. An after school program with the very teachers that you see every day would have been a tremendous help to me this year.

In the end, there are three major issues that I can see in America’s education system. Teachers that aren’t committed to teaching, fundraisers that don’t raise money, and students not being given the proper opportunity to learn what they need to. If these things were changed, schools would have all the money they needed, students wouldn’t feel like the teachers don’t care about them, and they would have a place to come to for help.