"I think school should give students more opportunities to explore their interests."
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"I think the purpose of schooling is to help kids, like you and I, to figure out our true meaning in life. Through trying new things, and experiencing new people, you’ll definitely fail, you know? But you need to just get back up, and keep going. Just have fun, and enjoy it."
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"When you’re at school, you don’t think about how much I’ve learned, you think about what’s that letter at the end of my name, what’s the little digit between 1 and 4 that makes me who I am, my worth.
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"But our society in the city that we live in is so focused around keeping the reputation up that we have really good students, really good high scores, all the students go to really well-known universities… I think it adds more pressure than it adds, like, knowing that you’re going to be successful makes you happy. And the pressure is not very good."
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"Sometimes schools can be so prescriptive and it’s hard to have that ability to adjust. You have to remember as a teacher that you need to be a great listener--responding to what they feel and what they want, rather than constantly making sure they’re hitting certain benchmarks, but getting more personal feedback from your students."
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Do you want to say more about what you see your mission as?
Oh sure, yeah: Subverting the public education system in the US that exists today. And trying to create something meaningful and real that empowers young people to become critical thinkers and to change society. ... I see public schooling's intention as creating complacent citizens that will carry out what needs to be done to promote the survival of the capitalist system. I don’t think it’s a healthy organism.
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D: I feel like to a certain extent, some schools are in place to hold an institutionalized racism. Depending on the area code, you may be receiving a totally different education than people in in richer stereotypically whiter neighborhoods. Everyone there is in AP, IB, or honors. The education system keeps people of color oppressed and helps white people excel.
E: I think America has schools because it wants its society to be better. To teach about how the government works, I think so that their citizens will have something to contribute to society, although that sometimes doesn't happen with everyone.
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To adults in general: Don’t treat teenagers like they're stupid. We are becoming adults and they treat it like it's an overnight thing when you turn 18, but it's not. It's a transition. We are in that transition where we went from being children, where we rely on our parents 24/7, into adults where we rely on ourselves. But, by treating teenagers like they're stupid or they don’t know what they're talking about - sure in some instances we don't, but in an environment where we push college and growing up and encourage getting a job or good grades so much, we grow up a lot faster than adults think. This is our reality. We’re not as young and dumb as you think.
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The whole system is designed towards certain kids. I think about my own experience in going to school—there were hardly any kids that had an ethnicity that was from a Spanish-speaking, or African-American background. I remember some kids, but very few. I didn’t think about it at the time, but not as an adult I think, “How did they survive? How did they come out of that? Did they come out on top?”
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Based on the other teachers I know in other schools, they aren’t given the freedom to try things and fail. Some of my better lessons come from a crappy one before. Principals and admin elsewhere think they know best, and try to tell teachers in what order content should be taught, and what experiences are acceptable or not acceptable - they don’t let teachers experiment and see works and what doesn’t.
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Our slogan at SLCSE is “change reality” and it came from Anthony. His senior year, Mr. Madden, the principal at the time, was in talking to that class – I think they were seniors – talking about post-graduation options. And Anthony made the comment, “you know we aren’t all going to graduate. We aren’t all going to make it – that’s just the reality of it.” And Mr. Madden said “well, then let’s change reality.” It kind of stuck.
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