SAN JOSE, CALIF.— Dear Silver Creek High Schoolers, have you ever wanted your teachers to understand why you struggle with putting your best foot forward at school everyday?
High school is a hard phase in most student's lives. Unless you peak in high school, but even then it comes with its set of challenges kids have never faced in their lives before, until now. If you're finding it hard to picture: think of cliquey friend groups, toxic relationships, giving up on learning with your grades sinking, and even drugs. Some of these cliches may seem extreme but if you ask a group of Silver Creek students if they've ever dealt with/witnessed more than two of these situations, the chances are they'll say yes. The best part about Silver Creek students though is through all of these roadblocks, they still make it to school every day ready to learn. A good majority of them deal with these life circumstances daily so it would help if teachers understood the struggles their students were facing.
Personally what I struggle with is time and getting scatterbrained. I love all my teachers and strive to reach my fullest potential in their subject, however, I come with my own limitations. Sometimes in a time crunch, my brain enters a "freeze" response triggered by my "fight or flight system" where the thought of completing work discourages me from actually paying attention to what I'm learning. Something that I would encourage teachers to know is that students often struggle to learn in a time crunch because they're more focused on completing the assignment than learning what the assignment is designed to teach so it helps when teachers dedicate more time to really driving home a concept.
The workload students are managing in every class.
Photo Credits: Priya Ramamurthy
According to Silver Creek junior Lorel Gonzalez, "I would say for one teacher in particular that quality is better than quantity when it comes to assigning work as well as tests, I don't think assigning a million homework questions will gauge our understanding of the topic well, neither will a lengthy test." Silver Creek senior Lindsey Macasiljig says, "Something I wish teachers knew is to be more understanding and kinder to students if they are not doing too well in class. Personally, things that happen outside of school interfere with how well I do. When my mind is caught up with other things it's hard to feel motivated or even find time. Being a student and working right after school, I don't even get home until 10 p.m. I really appreciate when teachers let their students make up assignments and turn in late work." It helps for teachers to know some students need a little extra support and help with deadlines and it makes a really meaningful impact when students see their teachers looking out for their best interests, considering their difficult life situations.
Silver Creek senior Vivian Le shares, "I guess if there's at least one thing, it's probably the fact that I wish they can be a bit coordinated, if that makes sense. Like they always seem to set up a lot of things, and don't seem to understand sometimes that we students have a lot of other things to worry about. Not saying that all teachers are like this, of course. I just kinda wish that, maybe, there could be some form of communication between them and a way to have us all get on the same board. Of course there is more nuance to this issue, but that's the very simplified version of it. This kinda mostly happens with AP classes, where they just don't stop giving you work, or at least make the deadlines seem strict for not much of a clear reason. I get that AP is kinda like that, but I wish it was more considerate of the high school student mentality."
Nonetheless, being a teacher is a very honorable job and we respect teachers for devoting their life to helping us follow our calling. As senior Kiana Nguyen says, "We appreciate everything that teachers do day in and out."
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