Student Voice

      I personally do not believe that there is a way to meet your own needs while fulfilling the requirements of assignments in high school. We are told as students that we need to meet the expectations of our teachers, principals, and Board of Education. We are seen as numbers to most, and even those who know our names, do not truly know what we want or need in our lives. There may be assignments with open ends, or the option for creativity, however, many of these are rather stressful. Students are often concerned that their interests and how they convey information is not enough or that the teacher will not understand the explanation. It is almost as if you can follow your interests to a certain extent, but are forced to remove them from your personal life and turn them into something used to describe logic or be turned into some writing experiment where it will be picked at and edited until you do not even recognize it as the thing you loved.

      As for being managers of our education, that is not necessarily true until you enter post-secondary schooling; which can also be quite limited if you know which path you would like to take. In high school we are limited to courses due to the prerequisites, or mandatory courses. This does not even include the stress of needing courses for university or college, the panic of not doing well in them is even worse.  We do not have as much freedom as many think we do as adolescents. We are confined to the policies of schools, as if our life were meant to revolve around school and school alone, like a downward spiral of stress and work. There is never truly freedom in the work you do for others.