Dear Mr./Mrs. President,

As a student in find going through school dealing with grades, social life, and responsibilities at home difficult to do. When I transitioned from going to middle school to high school I did not expect much of a difference in terms of what would be taught. I was under the impression that the classes would be a challenging version of the classes I had last year with more value and more importance. I was half right. The classes were more challenging but they were not at all rewarding to me except for Spanish class. In high school the content is not as important as the skill hiding behind the content. In all of the classes we are told that it is important to be able to convey an answer or idea so that when we are older those skills will already be there ready to use. I completely agree with the idea that it is important to be able to express your ideas, however that is pretty much the only thing I agree with. Why do I need to know what kind of irony was used in Midsummer Night’s Dream and what effect it had on the characters or at how many seconds did it take for the soccer ball to reach its maximum height. To prepare our students for modern jobs or careers we would need to change the way that the students are being taught. Our education system is in need of a reform and hopefully this advice may be of use in that reform.

Schools are meant to prepare children to become ready for any problems that they will encounter in their life, but what happens when their education focused on something that was no use to them into their life. To add on, what happens when a child isn’t prepared for something that they absolutely need. For example, it is difficult to obtain a job when you do not know how to fill out a resume and when you have no prior job experience. To solve that problem I suggest that the required community service in high school count as job experience which is a simple fix. Also teaching teens how to fill out a resume will give them an edge in the real world.It is honestly astonishing to me that state or city laws are not taught to a person as they grow up. An easy way to fix this would be to just teaching students about laws that they may not know about or laws that are easy to violate. We are always told that everyone is a unique snowflake, so then tell me why have we been teaching millions of Individuals the same material, the same way, for over a century?

My solution to the education problem is to teach children skills that they absolutely need using content that they are passionate about. For example instead of using reading the same book that has been used to teach children the structure of a book like to To Kill a Mockingbird, The Odyssey, or The Scarlet letter we could be using new bestselling books of modern time. If we want to teach these skills that are already then why not make it more engaging and entertaining. To add on to what I said earlier about children being different, We need to accommodate to giving our students a lifelong education instead of preparing them for standardized tests.

To conclude serious reform is needed to prepare our alumni for high level careers. To do this we would need to engage the student in material that they are interested in. I sincerely hope that these pieces of advice make you reform the education system that we have, and if there is one thing that you can take away from this is that students want to learn how to be better people not how to be better test takers.

Sincerely,

Edwin Aguilar-Rodriguez