Greetings Relatives/Frens,
I just had to share these amazing words from youth that were shared with me by a most wonderful and caring fren, Rose Fasthorse Nofchissey, who is a true educator because she cares about students. I’m excited about this because I often hear from our elected officials and top administrators discuss educational issues, social problems, and other harsh realities facing our youth. But it’s rare that I see or hear a youth speaking out because these debates over our youth rarely include a seat at the table for our youth.
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Below are the sentiments shared by students during student panel hosted by Ann Curry:.
1. I have to critically think in college, but your tests don’t teach me that.
2. We learn in different ways at different rates.
3. I can’t learn from you if you are not willing to connect with me.
4. Teaching by the book is not teaching. It’s just talking.
5. Caring about each student is more important than teaching the class.
6. Every young person has a dream. Your job is to help bring us closer to our dreams.
7. We need more than teachers. We need life coaches.
8. The community should become more involved in schools.
9. Even if you don’t want to be a teacher, you can offer a student an apprenticeship.
10. Us youth love all the new technologies that come out. When you acknowledge this and use technology in your teaching it makes learning much more interesting.
11. You should be trained not just in teaching but also in counseling.
12. Tell me something good that I’m doing so that I can keep growing in that.
13. When you can feel like a family member it helps so much.
14. We appreciate when you connect with us in our worlds such as the teacher who provided us with extra help using Xbox and Skype
15. Our teachers have too many students to enable them to connect with us in they way we need them to.
16. Bring the electives that we are actually interested in back to school. Things like drama, art, cooking, music.
17. Education leaders, teachers, funders, and policy makers need to start listening to student voice in all areas including teacher evaluations.
18. You need to use tools in the classroom that we use in the real world like Facebook, email, and other tools we use to connect and communicate.
19. You need to love a student before you can teach a student.
20. We do tests to make teachers look good and the school look good, but we know they don’t help us to learn what’s important to us.