Dear future President,

Most students go to school and take the same basic classes as everyone, but also have electives. Electives should be something a student enjoys and perhaps wants to study in college helping prepare them for the future. Sometimes students are lucky and their schools offer things they’re interested, but others aren’t as lucky.

Today in high school students have almost zero choices when it comes to their schedule; on the first day we’re just handed a schedule and expected to show up to these classes, enjoy them and get good grades. Also in high school though students are expected to know what they’d like to do in the future and what they’d like to major in in college. We can’t be expected to know what we’d like to do in the future if we’re not exposed to careers. All high school students should have access to diverse program options that match their interests and with these programs it will allow them to customize their learning plans.

I’m bored. That’s a common phrase you hear when it comes to high school students. Students joke all the time that they’re going to drop out of high school because everything they’re learning now is going to be useless to what they want to do in the future. A common reason for high school students dropping out today is boredom. That’s such a simple thing to fix. An article from “Psychology Today,” says that high school students after dropping out have reported that their classes aren’t interesting or they haven’t created personal connections with their teachers. Teachers need to stop worrying about teaching the state mandated curriculum and their jobs and focus their students. Also school boards need to come together and find ways to show students that school can be interesting and help prepare them for the future.

People will try and argue with me saying that we do have vocational high schools if someone wants more career based classes, but I see so many issues with that. First off students could still want to attend their own high school with their own peers and be able to participate in school activities during the day such as spirit week, so they still feel they are part of a community most have been a member of since elementary school. Students will have to go off campus everyday. Also teenagers are very indecisive. They can join a vocational school and be put on a career path that they’re not a hundred percent sure they would like to pursue. Or they could be happy with what they’re doing now, but a few years down the road after they graduate they could see their peers in college chasing after their dreams and already be certified in something with a full time job and realize they’re just now happy and wanting to start over and go to college. A news article from “US News,” talked to a principal from South Side High School in Rockville Centre, New York. She made a really good point saying she “fears we’re going back to the last century with selecting students and closing off their options to other careers in life.” Teenagers need to be exposed to many careers in their own high school before they have to choose exactly what they’d like to do for the rest of their lives.

Some high schools do offer a vocational education and/or a career/technical education which benefits students greatly. Students are offered a variety of career fields to study such as cosmetology and criminal justice. Sometimes students can leave high school certified in a career and have a full time job. A student graduating from Philadelphia’s Mercy Vocational High School is leaving with his carpentry certification and a full time job offer. This is great for students who know a hundred percent what they’d like to do in the future.

Students go to school and are just offered the basic classes and aren’t being exposed to enough careers. High school is suppose to be for preparing you for the rest of your life, but right now all it seems to be preparing us for is the state tests we have to pass at the end of the year. Not being exposed to careers in school is not helping teenagers choose the path for the rest of their lives. Adding more career based classes in high schools would greatly help students in the future.

Sincerely,

Soleil

Works Cited

Washor, Elliot. "High School Education: Multiple Pathways and Student Choice." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2016.

"What Are Problems That Cause Students to Drop Out of School?" Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2016.

US News. U.S.News & World Report, n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2016.