Dear Teachers

We are not all delinquents

Nor are we all against you

Please don’t scream at us all

For the faults of a few

 

We are not all lazy bums

But please consider that

The reason we didn’t turn in our homework

Isn’t because we were partying all night

It may be because we are the one

Taking care of our siblings

Or helping put food on the table

 

Dear Teachers

Please do not lose faith in us as a generation

When we seemly rebel

By texting in class and snickering in the back of the room

Please, we are not against you

 

Please do not look at us as a statistic

A number

A letter

A grade

There is so much more to us than our scores

 

Please stop putting us in boxes

And determining our futures based off the numbers you see

We are not numbers

Or SAT scores

Or GPAs

Or the number of clubs we could fit in four years

We are people, with dreams, with stories

 

Please

We are not all delinquents

Nor are we all against you

Please don’t scream at us all

For the faults of a few

 

We may not turn in our homework sometimes

And we may make mistakes

But we are learning, even if it seems we are not

Don’t define us by our scores

That is why we’re rebelling

Because we are being taught that only numbers are who we are

 

That to you we are a number

A statistic

A number

A grade…

 

A GPA score

A SAT score

A AP score

The number of clubs we stack up

 

It is not that we have given up education

It’s that we feel education has given up on us

Because we failed to meet the bar

And as a result we’re being told that we are doomed

 

Some of us are chasing our dreams

While, some of us,

Are struggling to survive

 

So next time we don’t turn in our homework

Or fail a test

Give us the grade we deserve

But don’t look at us judgingly

And lecture us about how we’re not trying

As if you know what the definite reason,

As to why we’re not meeting, your standards