Dear Next President,

      Congratulations for winning the election and becoming the president for the next 4 or maybe even 8 years. In this letter I will be sharing and talking about my thoughts on how students are taught in school in this generation. In my opinion, and probably many others, things like homework and standardized testing does not gain students anything except for a lot of stress and not good grades in some peoples case. Most teachers obviously try their best to give us the best education possible but I feel it is not being done in a very good way. 

      When teachers say "this homework should only take you 20 minutes", so many things are not taken into consideration. What about our other homework? What about sports? What about other extra curricular activities? Some students are very good at memorizing information and genuinely enjoy school but it's not fair to have memorization tests that's just stresses out students. Studies show that 30 percent of students in the United States fail to graduate high school their first try. This is becoming a large problem because students now will soon be the future of the world and it is scary to think they will not be educated in the best way possible. There is not many things that can be done to help all schools but we could start with ours by talking to students and seeing the ways they learn best to try making it easier and less stressful to come to school every day. 

      All though I know there is not very much you can do about this issue in every single school in the country especially with all the other more important issues going on right now, but it is still an important topic to think about. Hardly anything I learned in middle school is remembered 100%, but it could be if we had the right teaching styles. Every student is completely different in learning ways and thoughts, and i think there is a better way to teach students without sitting in a class room for 6 hours a day with a two 25 minute breaks, taking 3+ tests or quizzes a day, or spending all our free time studying or doing homework. We could take in to consideration that some students can't sit in a classroom just reading out of a text book, while for some that is the best way they learn. This is not an issue that will probably be taken affect on but is something that me and other students feel strongly about. 

      "Students are 20% of our population, but 100% of our future." This quote is something I think is very important. If we keep going the way we are teaching students now less and less students will graduate, making less and less educated adults. Eventually becoming a even worse issue than it is. So we should start now to teach students things we will need to live, instead of how to solve for T in an equation or making us memorize things most will just forget in a week. We are supposed to be the future of the world, so why aren't we doing that? 

Thank you,

Tessa Hatfield