Narrative Essay On Evanton High School

Alfie Kohn’s Article “How Not to get into College” analyses many key factors of how the current school system does not work and how we as members of society need to work together extensively to remodel the system to ensure the success of future students by valuing education over grades. By looking at how students only join clubs and and worship numerical grades only to impress colleges; students facing pressure from parents, teachers, and society to get good grades and succeed in life; and how students live through many mental health implications due to a multitude of factors surrounding their educational life, we can determine that systemic factors of this society have turned students of this generation into grade grubbers.

As both the standards of school work and stress levels of student’s rise, the American school system remains unaltered, unchanged, and unaffected for over a hundred years. School is an institution that can serve as a massive gate in life granting you access to a job, stability, and a future or it can become a giant pillar in the way of everything you wish to achieve. While we recognize that a student’s own motivation, study habits, and will to learn, are cardinal in any schooling system, we must also understand the issues with an institution that is fundamentally unsound from the ground up. In today’s world, students are shoved with the hands of docility, and amenability as they render themselves in a system that has inadvertently failed them, by neglecting to celebrate their differences, and varying learning patterns. Conformity in the education system has shown to damage the personalization and

Education has always been an important part of our sustainable society in which everyone plays a role. The purpose of the education system is to provide a way for students to learn and gain knowledge. The current education system focuses more on evaluations rather than teaching, which creates a stressful and unpleasant high school experience. Alfie Kohn’s essay, How Not to Get into College: The Preoccupation with Preparation describes the difficulties and purposeless school practices students face when preparing themselves for life beyond high school.

According to one study, over 7,000 American students drop out of high school each day; that equals about 1.2 million students every year! (“11 Facts,” n.d., p. 1). Mike Rose, the author of “I Just Wanna Be Average” was almost included in this statistic. Luckily, Rose was “saved” by one of his teachers, who stoked his love for learning. In his story, Mike Rose effectively addresses the issues with public education by sharing his anecdote about taking vocational classes and providing “several reasons for the ‘failure’ of students who go through high school belligerent, fearful, stoned, frustrated, or just plain bored” (1989, p. 1). Rose’s purpose for writing “I Just Wanna Be Average” is to inform the general public of the current education system and how it needs to change. Through a relaxed, yet passionate tone, Rose showed that teachers need to be more energetic and engaging with their students. Because schools are unengaging and boring, student dropouts are occurring-- and for the same reasons today as they were thirty years ago. A study that was released in 2005

Journalist Alexandra Robbins ventures back to her old high school to examine the competitive efforts students are having to take to compete on the battlefield that is the education system in her book, The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids. Robbins explores the lives of multiple students who are stressed and pressured to maintain good grades and get into an Ivy League college. This text allows for intriguing insight on how the educational system has “spiraled out of control” and displays the different measures students must now take to be the best. Robbins’ The Overachievers is an eye-opening bestseller which exposes the social pressures and anxieties students must overcome in their high school lives as they attempt to impress and prove to colleges they are worthy of acceptance.

Imagine how would you feel if you went to a high school named after Adolf Hitler and you were a Jew? That’s exactly how black students at Lee High School feel. Lee High School is named after a Robert E Lee a Confederate General. Some students have started a petition to change the name to Paulette R. Turner High School. Paulette was the first African American to integrate to Lee High School. I believe that Lee High School should change its name to Paulette R. Turner because of how the students feel, a racist background, and we could change history.

When I was a little girl, my grandma would always take me to her school with her and let me sit in on her classes throughout the day. I always begged her to let me go with her because I had loved getting to be there with her and getting to pretend that I too was a part of the class. Alvord Continuation High School was mainly composed of portable classrooms, the buildings were red and white spanish style buildings. The school my grandmother taught at was not a regular high school, this was a place where students over the age of sixteen were able to attend in order to finish school to obtain a high school diploma. The students she taught primarily looked a lot older than sixteen, they were adults trying to graduate to move on with their lives.

I have always been in love with the game of softball. I love all the competition and the thought of working at it brings joy to my heart. I could always go to the field to get my mind off things and just focus. But in May of 2015 my life changed and I had a whole new mind set on everything.

As generations pass, and students change and develop, teachers and administrators propose new techniques to help students improve. From the introduction of school, to the division of age groups, to standardized testing, someone always has a new way to help students in school. A new idea, however, may be the key to success. A school in Massachusetts has developed a new program that challenges students with college level classes while still in high school. As students improve in school, to prevent boredom in the classroom, they need a challenge, this challenge being harder level, college courses. While still in the comfort of high school, students experience the rigor of college classes, this helping ease the transition into higher education

My eyes repeatedly peered to the stands which had a crowd of at least four hundred students eagerly waiting as we were warming up. Observing the crowd I noticed the left side of the field was full of students in orange Parkview High School shirts while to my right students were in purple Brookwood High School shirts. It was the Lacrosse Region Championships between Parkview, the school I played for, and, Brookwood High School. Both of our schools were ranked top ten for biggest rivalries, we knew it would be a fight to win the most significant game for us.

Vividly, I can remember walking through the high school doors for the first time as a freshman with shaky legs and a nervous heartbeat. The school was a jungle of wide, shiny hallways filled with lumbering seniors who I thought were going to knock my books down on Freshman Friday. However, time has passed, and now I find myself to be the tall and “scary” senior. As I ponder about the last four years I have spent at Little Falls Community High School, I can not help but realize how much I have changed for the better. As I have matured, I have gleaned that beauty does not come through makeup and clothing brands, but rather through processing a good heart. Also, I have changed my career and college plans after high school, and I know that I will

“Fight, fight, fight,” was the chant that so often filled the halls of West Monroe High School. The teachers heard it every time but always hid in the teacher's lounge for fear of being attacked. This was the legacy of WMH, fights, student riots, and terrified teachers.

As soon as high school begins, most students are swimming in opposition, plagued with the options life has to offer, and judged on how trials are navigated. They live lives of scholarly action; explaining, memorizing, solving and arguing are the basics on which their success is determined

It was 7:00 in the morning when we arrived at the Johnston City High School. Once everyone arrived at the high school, we got on the bus and headed off to Benton. As we stepped foot on the bus, we all sat there quietly, nervous about the results of this game. This was the game that determined whether or not we went on to state. Coach Simon and Coach Shane gave us one of their what we like to call "before the game warm-up talks". We were all nervous of course, but we were all determined to win this game. We had been looking forwards to winning regionals and going to state the whole season and that day was the day that we gave us the opportunity to go to state. After the thirty minute bus ride, we finally got to Benton and once we got there,

Yet, the education does not stop at middle school, for high school really puts all the basic skills from elementary and middle school to work as the assignments and the exams become more challenging. We do not only learn about reading, writing, history, and math, we learn about the people around us as we associate with different personalities, and as we see what we have grown up to be and what we want to be later in life. Accordingly, the high school years are a time when teachers emphasize the importance of graduating and attending college in order to have a “succesful future.”