Dear School,

You think we're made up of grades, test scores and quizzes;

You tell us to love learning when all it does is kill us when we have a bad day or bad year or bad brain

And we end up getting less than a 100% leaving us feeling ashamed.

 

School, you've been making students feel bad since 1837.

You tell us to accept change, but you have never changed your system

Of comparing every kid to every other student in the nation

Based on a few standardized tests that ask only one type of question

 

And you better not forget the teachers you hire

Who think their only job is not to get fired

That think, "Hey, this will easy"

But unless these teachers incorporate everybody in the lesson

Then more students will start feeling more pressure

The more pressure makes big goals seem lesser and lesser

 

And Maybe every institution would have higher graduation rates

If every single student was treated like an adult with dreams,

A dignified person rather than

A poor man getting kicked to the streets

It's not always the student's fault

If an assignment is not turned in

Some people just can't seem to win

Especially when the game lasts ten hours straight

With no breaks, no power, no time to negotiate

 

The main point of this rambling erupt

Is to persuade you, school,

That something needs to be reviewed higher up

Because there is one teacher for more than forty students in all

And the good ones are getting underpaid to force college upon us

Even though more than half of us can't pay for it anyway

Even with  financial aid

 

Also, school, I don't mean to get personal

I mean tell me if I'm wrong

But I see that you go home  and kick off your shoes everyday

And I bet you get your beauty sleep and wake up without feeling gray

You don't go to classes and get homework that twists your mind into another lane

You don't have a mental illness or physical diagnosis causing pain

You don't talk to us students

You do things your own way, on your own time

Because, let's face it, you are comprised of a lot of people

That don't even attempt to try

 

So I leave you, School, with a word problem and essay answer for you:

How many years will it take for you to understand you have a pretty narrow mind that only caters to one type of student: the valedictorian kind?

And do you really believe that every student learns the same way?

That one common classroom is what is needed when we are told to be different

And embrace each other's quirky characteristics?

My answer that I present to you, with all due respect, school, some students learn with pictures  and others need a pair of hearing aids

This is no different with the average kid versus a kid who gets perfect grades

I'd also say that each student has a different structure, different flow;

Some find it harder than others to blossom and to grow.

 

So keep all of this in mind the next time you try to roll your eyes and look aside when someone tells you that you aren't being fair or when you laugh at the student that can't read right because you don't live with us and see us before we sleep tight

You are not the smartest of them all, you are not our light

You don't know how everybody thinks

So I suggest you listen to us, the students

So you can learn to understand that

We can come to a compromise

 

Sincerely,

The students who constantly think about you every day, and every night

We hope you know what you're doing

We hope you realize our strife because I think it's pretty clear

That there have been too many suicides and dropouts

Now the names are just part of our math class statistics

We cannot….go on like….this