When student needs are not being met, the natural response is to turn to the ladder of adults “in charge” and climb until you reach that one person or group who finally has the capability to change things. Community members may start with the teacher of the class the student is facing a conflict in, and move up to the department head, the parent-teacher association, the principal, the superintendent, testing organizations like the Board of Regents or CollegeBoard, or even political figures. What I’ve found is that the hierarchy of decision-making entities is complex even to understand, let alone navigate. Teachers themselves struggle with who to reach out to and how to affect real change without becoming a target for disrupting the status quo. They can feel just as frustrated and powerless as those outside the system. Like speaking to a customer service representative who transfers you to one department, and then another, and then another, only to end up back at the number you started with, it often feels like the system is designed in the hopes that you’ll give in and give up before the real fight starts.

This struggle to maintain a system that has failed so many is only widening the gap between the education that students receive and the one that students want and need. The truth is, students are begging for their education system to be updated from one that underscores the memorization of useless information through impractical assessments, and they’re frustrated that it’s taking so long for adults to see how far they’ve been missing the mark all these years.

It is precisely because I’m young, inexperienced, and unproven that my suggestions should be treated with extra careful consideration. I was just there, a high school student in the trenches, when the coronavirus, the worldwide epidemic that would change everything for years to come, struck hard and fast. I’ve experienced and witnessed firsthand the successes and failures of all sorts of so-called tried-and-true teaching methods on myself and my peers. Like an undercover agent on the inside of an operation, I’ve blended in on the student side, secretly scheming how I would teach the class if I was in the teacher’s position. There were countless times when I sat in math class and watched a teacher desperately try to explain the steps of a math problem to a confused student, just for them to admit that they still didn’t get it. I remember thinking, If the teacher would just explain it like this, I’m sure they’d get it, but sitting in silence as I watched the teacher stumble over the question “But why do we do that step instead of this one?” I’d sit there and plot how I’d run the classroom if I was in charge: Kahoot Fridays, fancy glitter stickers for good test grades, interesting real-life-based word problems, practice tests where we go over the solutions, and having students put together their own studyguide, with steps, for how to solve each type of problem to make sure that everyone is on the same page.