Justice

Hi, my name is Justice.  I am a ninth grader, and I use they/them pronouns.  Today, I want to talk about two things that help me learn best at school: creativity and comfort.

At school, it’s important for me to feel like I am in a connected environment, where teachers understand and care about what makes me, me.  I envision school being a place where students love to be there, where we do creative things that help my brain want to learn, instead of feeling like I’m trapped in a place where I don’t want to be.

When I go to school right now most of the time I feel like the adults aren’t really invested in helping me succeed.  In a lot of my classes, teachers will give us a packet to work on at the beginning of the day — then they will go sit at their desk and talk to each other about teacher stuff, while we all just work on our own.  It seems like they care a lot more about checking the boxes of what they’re supposed to teach us, instead of getting to know us and finding out what we need to learn best.

When everybody feels disconnected from each other, both students and teachers are more likely to be stressed.  For example, if you are late to class three times, you can get detention, and the teachers get upset.  But our high school is huge — much bigger than my school last year — and it’s almost impossible for anyone to get from class to class in five minutes.  One more thing is that I have lots of troubles with reading and writing, and when we are working quietly, it helps me a lot to have music playing in my headphones.  But our teachers don’t let us do that.  Instead of talking to us, and finding out what would be most helpful for us, they just impose these rules, which makes everyone feel disconnected from one another.

When we do creative things where we can work with each other and activate all the different parts of our brain, school is a place where I actually enjoy being.  For example, one day in biology class, we did a project where the teacher brought in four different colored marshmallows to represent the four nucleotides of DNA, and used the licorice to represent the sugary acid.  We used toothpicks to bind everything together, and twisted it up to make the double-helix.  I absolutely love activities like this because they are interactive and get my brain ready to learn for the rest of the day.  I was so appreciative of how much effort the teacher put in to make the day fun for us — she even let us eat the marshmallows afterward.

That same teacher – my biology teacher –also made an effort to get to know me as a person.  When I was struggling in class, she stayed after school to help me, but we wouldn’t just talk about biology.  We’d talk about politics, life, history, and really just everything.  My biology teacher is a great example of how great school can be when it is creative and connected.

One of my biggest passions in life is helping people feel included and valued.  At the Haverhill Boys and Girls Club, I was the founder of our GSA, which stands for Gender and Sexuality Alliance.  The GSA isn’t just about the LGBT community – it’s about everyone having a safe space to talk — somewhere they want to be, and they can be themselves.

My hope is that if we introduce more creativity and comfort into every school — by doing more interactive activities, and by teachers making an effort to connect with us as human beings — school would be a more comfortable, happy, and safe environment for students and teachers alike.  School should be a place where we all enjoy being there, and we all want the best for each other.  This is why I believe that creativity and comfort should be vital parts of every school.