Nothing along the lines of severity I’ve heard elsewhere, but here goes nothing. In my sophomore year of high school (the last full year in person pre-COVID), whilst I was skipping class I had come across some guy who used to be a straight A’s honors student. He was skipping too, so since he hadn’t been in school in a while, and since we haven’t talked in a minute, I decided to skip with him and talk about nonsense and life at the time. While we were sitting in that staircase, I had to know why he didn’t really show up for classes anymore considering he did so well the entire first year. He told me “I don’t have a real reason to anymore.” Though this seems like a harmless enough statement, it changed the way I kind of viewed how I should approach doing things for the future of myself. Sadly it was the last time I have seen him since, as it was roughly the end of the school year, and since he was already failing horridly, there was no more reason to keep going that year. After that, we had a month of school and then COVID started around the world around November/ December. Though I never seen him again, he really did change something in me, even though it seems kind of cliche. My junior and senior year of high school, though tedious and highly unrewarding, I finished my two years above 95 average. The reason I changed so drastically when he said that is because I have a “why” because I have half my families names on my back. I can’t really afford to mess up and lose what hope we have left for the generations to come. More specifically, I have two younger siblings and a niece who watch my every move, especially with them growing up, so if I don’t succeed, there’s not too many good role models here, so I think I can bear that burden long enough. So yea, that’s my life changing revelation when it comes to my relationship with my studies.
Views on education- School Struggles
Since I started middle school I have noticed that students are expected to learn everything and have good grades. School is not that easy, especially if you do not fully understand the language. Nowadays schools feel that it is just about grades and competition, which can be unfair because there are people that are gifted students and people have the money to pay for prestigious schools and tutors while the rest of us are being pressured by our parents and teachers to get good grades and be the best at everything to be successful in life.
My first year of middle school was not easy, I did not understand anything. I remember staying up until 3:00 am just to finish a project. I wanted to get a good grade because that is what my parents expected from me. When I got my grade I was disappointed because I did not get the grade that I was expecting and when I saw the talented student get a good grade it made me feel that I was not good enough. I have worked really hard and I was able to get good grades. Seeing other people struggle makes me think that there is something wrong with our education because students have to compete with talented students which makes us feel that we are not capable of succeeding in life also we can feel the pressure from our parents telling us that we are not good enough and that we are not even trying even though we are doing our best.
School is difficult and every student can not understand everything that is being taught and if students are struggling we as a class should help and make sure that everyone understand at the main points of a lesson, also teachers should provide extra help for students and make lessons that can be both beneficial to the talented student and the student that is struggling.
Specific Incident: Speech as a Class
There was a time in my life during elementary school where I had to take a SPEECH class. What is speech? It’s a class where you learn how to write, read and speak the English language. Now to some this might not seem as bad as it sounds, to them they actually think it’s helpful. The real problem comes in when you start to see the times where I had to go to take speech class, one during Math class and the other during music class.
Now how does this relate to the prompt, well since I had to take it during normal class time, I got to skip those classes. Which means I would fall behind when it comes to learning in those subjects. This made me feel different and uncomfortable. Every day for 2 classes, for an hour they would pull me out to come with them. Some students would even start whispering rumors about where I go. To me, it felt like I was being treated for problems that needed to be fixed and that it was making it difficult for me to comprehend. But in reality, we all learn at a different pace, and disrupting that can really take a toll in the future. To make it even worse I had to wait in a room with toys to entertain me until the teacher arrived. While the other kids got to learn and do what normal kids do, I got to play games like fishing and building blocks. This made me feel dumb and empty inside, it always made me wonder if they were there to help or hurt me. It almost made me think that they were doing it on purpose to hurt my education because sometimes it would carry on for another hour. Later on, I would find out that I had no problems communicating with other students during class time, In fact, I thought I was able to understand just as well as they could.
I remember that even my mother tried to do something about it, she would go every year to tell the speech teacher if it was necessary and she would always respond with the same thing “YES!” They even tried offering a speech class again for middle school, but by that point, my mother had enough.
