Students often whisper about the things they feel that teachers don’t understand, but never bother to raise their voices and express their opinions. We keep quiet and convince ourselves to be comfortable with things that we feel take away from our education, our learning and our future. Whether you’re a teacher or student, your voice is justified. Here are a few things we wish teachers understood from our perspective.
“As a highschool student, lots of people are depending on you. Parents, bosses, friends, boyfriend/girlfriend, teachers, coaches, etc. Lots of students are doing the best they can, but it’s just not easy to please everyone,” said Emma Martens, SRSS drama student, about how much students actually have to attend to.
Teachers often express that school should be a teenager’s first priority and that everything should follow behind. To a student this is illogical because not all of us want an academic future. The affairs that we take part in outside of school are often the biggest contributors to our future, and yet those involvements are what we are being told we have to give up in order to succeed in a classroom. Students like Emma Martens recognize the importance of being able to balance school and extracurricular activities but wish that the difficulty of this task was acknowledged.
Taylor Martens, an up and coming Rugby athlete, states that students have an abundance of homework, especially in higher courses/grades. To answer this chaos she expresses that if tests and assignments were presented to the class well in advance so we can be as prepared as possible there would not be such an accumulation of stress. This stress is not enjoyable for students, teachers or parents. We understand that sometimes teachers have an idea for how a class is going to go and it simply does not take that path, which leaves it up to the teacher’s improvisational skills. In this situation no one is to blame, teenager or adult. We all know that things simply don’t go our way sometimes. However, we wish we were informed about tests as soon as possible. Five days in advance is not much when you’ve got three other upcoming tests.
We would also like educators to be conscious of a developing and changing society. As the students that learn in the classroom change, the classroom itself must recondition its ways.
¨Times have changed so much and I think classrooms should as well. I think they should involve more creativity, exploration, and mistakes,¨ says GSA advocate, Abigail Martens.
The school room is a place that has altered only slightly while the teenage community has altered drastically over the years. We feel that we continue the same basic practices that generations before us have exercised. We understand that one teacher cannot change the school system but we just hope that they are aware of how society is evolving.
Some students just want teachers to understand that they play some of the biggest roles in a teenager’s life. There are many stories in which teachers are the very people that change a person’s life around for the better.
¨Dear teachers, understand that you have the ability to make high school a nightmare not only for your students but also for yourself, and that you can change the perspective of every student that walks through your doorway. I can’t say that about a lot of people. Please, take advantage of that.¨ Here, Aesthetics major, Emma Wiebe, speaks about the positive influence her teachers have had on her in the past.
Ultimately, what students like Emma want teachers to recognize is that they have the means to change a student’s entire four years of high school and high school is one of the key contributing factors in regards to our future.
¨Some days I didn’t even know that I wanted to be heard and yet they were there to listen.” Emma Wiebe.
Sabre Voices 