I've been spending a lot of time working within the school system, courtesy of my internship in a Kindergarten classroom for the past two months. A lot of emotions about school in the past 15/19 years of life, more specifically high school, have resurfaced.
Most of those emotions include how I am forever pissed off at the school system for how it made me FEEL. Maybe, you've never thought about it that way, or maybe for those who haven't been in high school for a while, you can't forget to put real life faces to those statistics.
I did not grow up in a family where flawless academics were stressed, of course I was expected to pass all of my classes I took--failing was not an option, but my parents also helped me understand that sometimes I didn't do well in things and it wasn't entirely my fault. Meaning everyone has things that there good at, and things there not so good at, and that's okay. This was a beautiful life lesson, because I began to direct my life towards things I was good at, because naturally those things made me happy and I could become extremely gifted in something if I continued to pursue things like that.
Naturally I would do better in the classes in high school where I could find myself being expressive, interested, or inspired, and not extremely well in the uninspiring classes (while still passing). Sometimes it didn't matter if I tried really hard to focus, learn, and study, there were things that my brain just didn't work well with and I could not do perfectly no matter what. But, I accepted the fact that I was good at somethings and bad at other things.
After a long time of being forced to be educated on things that were unimportant, uninteresting, or sometimes just something I knew I wasn't good at, I began accepting the fact that it was often my fault as a person that I just wasn't smart enough, or that my brain just couldn't do something. It began to create a trend of me getting mediocre grades in lot of my really hard classes. But, I wouldn't let people see that I was bad at things/ or that I knew I was bad at things. I wasn't going to let my grades give me an identity, because something deep down was telling me that it doesn't really matter what the grades are telling you, they don't really know you entirely. This is also kind of a big fat excuse because yes, a lot of the times I was unfocused, or distracted.
Then my junior year I took my first standardized test, the ACT. I did not study an extreme amount, nor was I worried that I was going to need a super high score to get into college. I scored below average. I felt a familiar feeling of being squashed. I had finally been given a label, a statistic, a name. I knew where I belonged amongst the world of teenagers my age, or so what a group of people whom had never met me had decided where I belonged. I knew they had no idea who I really was, or how much I really knew outside of their categories on the test, they still categorized me, put me in my place, made assumptions and compared me to other faceless statistics.
The next year when I took the SAT, I again scored below average. Now, I would even say that I'm not really the worlds best test taker, but not everyone is either. The fact that I did not score high did not hinder my ability to get into the schools I wanted to. But, do you want to know how they made me feel?
Terrible. It was obvious to me that some teaching techniques just simply didn't work for me. Sitting for long periods of time, lectures, and constant testing were my weak spots.
But... The more I tried, the less positive results occurred. The more I was convincing myself that it was, in fact, my fault I couldn't think like everyone else. Now, it's 100% accurate to say I was lazy, unprepared, or clearly just didn't care sometimes. But, what high school student isn't? That was often the reasoning for my low grades, but not always. The system had convinced me I was "below average". I could feel it in the classrooms and in the hallways at school. People made assumptions from what my grades and test results said about my knowledge. I can even recall moments when I would be walking to a classroom for a test, and I knew that I wasn't going to get a good score, no matter how hard I tried. Because, I belonged in the below average statistic. For someone who knows a lot about non-school related things, it was very frustrating. Even in reality if no one really cared, it often felt like they could assume I wasn't an A+ student and put themselves before me. This made me feel hopeless, like it was an unbreakable bound that I felt like I did not deserve to be labeled with.
For every person is extraordinary, beautiful, and a blessing to this world. Even though it's just statistics for a big database, this label still hurt.
Now, because of how I felt in high school, the thought of college discouraged me completely. I was uninterested to continue to feel "below average" for four more years. It wasn't until I read, Better Than College by Blake Boles, that I finally realized school didn't define who I was going to be. I read about how life was possible without going to college, and how to continue your education and skills as an adult without spending thousands of dollars on college tuition and drowning in student loans. Now, don't worry I do plan on attending college. This book let me in on a little secret, that as long as I graduated, where I really end up being in life does not depend on what kind of college I get into right after high school.
For a girl who has spent the 15 of my 19 years of life in school, my whole world was/ has been school. To finally learn that what I get on my SAT or what college I get into doesn't determine my happiness, wellbeing, or my ability to have an amazing job, was groundbreaking for me emotionally. I was relieved. I think senior year of high school is just a little too late to teach kids that the numbers on the page aren't their whole life. Because, I spend a good two years of high school, feeling punished and lesser than others because of what my test scores told me.
Just because I wasn't particularly outstanding in school, doesn't mean that I should be categorized and judged for doing so, and being told that I am pretty much worth less than your average joe. I should not be convinced I'm below average by people I've never met before. No one else should be either. The pressures of standardized testing is rising. People often forget about the emotional effects these tests are having on teenagers. I don't know why this label has stuck with me so much. Maybe it's because I came out of high school feeling discouraged that that is my place in the world, rather than it inspiring me to be better. I was exhausted from constantly trying to break my mold, and prove the system wrong that I am different. But, in reality those who don't fit in the mold, there is no place for us in the system. We must look from the outside in, in on the problem, in on the brokenness, and we must be the reformers that work day by day to create small changes that make it easier for those people to survive high school.
