Hey Pandas, If You Could Change One Thing About The School System, What Would It Be? (Closed)

The strict dress codes. PERIODT!!

Retired teacher here, so QUITE a few things:

-- invest as much money as possible in early childhood education

-- centralize education on the Federal level, so that all educator salaries are the median average for the entire US. As it is now, people on the coasts generally do very well as teachers; people anywhere else, esp in the South, do not do well at all. I moved from the South to the West Coast, just so I would do a lot better as a teacher.

-- make school lunches a lot better. Michelle Obama had the right idea, but it was too much too soon. Bring back salad bars, please.

-- hunger can be hard to spot; one school at the very least in each county/parish (I'm from Louisiana originally) should be designated a site where kids can get grab-and-go breakfasts and lunches. I taught high school in a very affluent area of Los Angeles. Each day I brought a bag of home-cooked food to school, and left with it empty every day, even in an affluent area. Kids (and staff) get hungry. Fed people feel cared for, and can function better.

-- Don't evaluate teachers' ability to teach on how well or poorly a kid takes a test. Just so ridiculous.

-- Aggressively vet administrators. Rotate them back into the classroom when complaints come pouring in, and they've lost touch with what it's like to be a teacher. Five years as admin, one or two back in the classroom. Make them get back in touch with EVERYTHING teachers have to do and are responsible for.

-- Restorative justice works. Say a kid tags a desk; make the kid write an apology to the teacher AND clean all the desks. Let kids know actions have consequences.

-- Make schools safe for LGBTQ+ and trans students. Have designated safe bathrooms for everyone.

-- Make administration do yard duty, while teachers get a break. It's what we had in Los Angeles due to a strong teachers' union. We had nutrition (15-20 minutes) and lunch (30 minutes) off. Time to eat, decompress, relax for a minute, run to the restroom, make copies, check phones/messages, or just chill out for a bit.

-- Teachers' unions across the US, including a national teachers' unions. In Los Angeles, we fought for and got better working conditions a couple of times. Workers control the means of production! Workers together are far more powerful than any small powers-that-be. Without teachers, staff, custodians, etc., there is no school.

take all politics out of the classroom.

Get rid of SPORTS! Massive amounts of $$$ are spent on equipment only used by a few, fewer will ever play sports outside of school. NO pep rallies that take away from class time, NO uniforms, NO team signs. NO stadium for one sport! No sports injuries. Have exercise classes.

The stupid dress code. I hate all of it who looks at someone's knees and is like ooo your smexy

Less testing, less grades.

More practical learning (learning about adding numbers while grocery shopping or learning languages via penpalling. Et cetera).

Not too big classes.

Not using tablets/computers all the time. It's important to do stuff manually.

And honestly, I want the school system in my country to make it mandatory again to choose either German or French as one's 2nd foreign language (English is mandatory as the 1st foreign language).

And they should stop with forcing special needs kids to go to public school. There's simply too many heartbreaking stories if kids with severe autism that go through hell when they go to a normal public school and their parents fight hard battles to have their kids go to schools that spezializes in whatever the kids struggle with.

Liveable wages for teachers. Class materials and supplies provided by the schools.

The dress code! At my school, straps have to be 4 fingers wide and if we wear leggings we have to have fingertip length shirts. One time someone came up to me and asked "Is my shirt too short?" and I said no. She said that our principal said it was. I saw someone else with the exact same shirt in a different color and she said she didn't get told anything. I have more complaints, but this is the main one.

There’s a few:
1)As a student I find that tests are really hurtful to confidence as I’m a bad test taker but know all the subject matter. Having limited tests or no tests would be an improvement
2)a serious no tolerance policy on drugs bullying or false accusations(wether be academic or other
3) self expression. I can’t wear a racer back tank top without being dress coded but the cheerleaders are allowed to walk around with half their butts sticking out
4) more basic life skills teaching- financing, repair, and building. I’ll need to know how to do life beyond high school and it’s hard to learn it all

To have more flexible lunch options. Yes, you can go get a note from your doctor and then give it to the school and THEN you get a different lunch, but they never have vegan options. Also, my school is constantly saying how you need to drink water but instead of giving us free water bottles with out lunch, we get free chocolate milk.

I have a few:

Start time; my school starts at 7:30 but busses come at 7 so I have to be outside at 6:50. Teens need more sleep! We’re all severely sleep deprived.

Homework; there is hours a night pretty much no matter what classes you take and kids have sports and extracurricular stuff and jobs which are all also needed for money or college applications and just general quality of life.

Pay teachers more! They do a lot and don’t get very much in return.

Chill on state testing, thankfully my state doesn’t a lot money by test score (we do it by taxes on who lives nearby which also need to change, it’s causing school inequality because of the wealth differences), but there are so many and I’m sure they aren’t collecting much real data with all of them. (Ex. Government state test is required senior year and kids at my school don’t need it to graduate and thus answer “c” to every question. I’m sure other schools have similar things happen.)

Mental Health support and general accommodations; kids are so so stressed and anxious and there’s virtually no support. Accommodations for other disabilities are not always respected by teachers and they really need to be.

No extra credit on any test in my county.

Kids teasing kids. I hate this…. Kids hate on me because i like anime. Like, oh I’m sorry you don’t like it!! Also, I’m taking a Japanese class, and people ask me what certain things mean, and I say it and they laugh at me for not knowing or for knowing it. Anyone else have this problem? Kids are so rude to other kids. This gives me so much social stress and it’s hard me to focus about it, so you can imagine I don’t have the best grades. Teaches need to do stuff about this. Also, I have another, when I was in kindergarten we had an egg hunt. And we had a no pushing rule, and a kid pushed me. I got no candy that day. Teaches need to look at both stories instead of seeing the story from their eyes. Anyone agree on these or at least one of them?? Thanks!!

As an 8th grader I think they should make learning more fun, apply what their teaching to our actual lives, focus more on what we will actually need in life, teach us the easy version of things instead of the things that are harder to remember, feed us food that’s actually edible, and give us more free time,

Two more things

1) Skimpy uniforms for girls. What the hell? Why is there STILL no trousers option for girls in the majority of schools? What is WRONG with people?

2) English literature curriculum, for the sake of arnold UPDATE THE BOOKS. No kid should have to develop hatred of Shakespeare from having it forced on them, and here's a newsflash, there are better / more contemporary books on most issues (racism, exclusion etc) available than stuff that was written in the 1940s and 50s!

How about giving kids the opportunity to specialise?

When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was play sports. I ended up working in the industry so that was good. But it was at the expense of my more scholarly subjects. Maybe if a kid showed a talent or interest in a subject, allow them to focus all of their attention on that, instead of muddying the waters with subjects which they have no use for. If I have the potential to become a world class botanist, then why do I need to study religion, for instance? Or a language? I just think we ought to give kids a chance at being the absolute best they can be. I'm not saying this is for every student, but I think the opportunity should be there.

3 things I want to happen, I know I'm breaking the rules.

1) Homework. "Here you just worked so hard for 8 hours, work on this for 2 more". It brings lots of stress and anxiety to students' lives. I feel like if we just abolished homework, school would be a lot more fun.

2) Students had a bit more freedom in learning. Idk about you, but I learn when I'm having fun. The other day in an interesting biology lesson, I learned that sharks were once land-dwelling creatures and resembled horses. I feel like we should have a bit more freedom in what we learn about. For example; in my biology class were working on a project that has one general idea, but sub-topics that we get to choose and research. I'm doing how food and nutrition impact mental disorders, like autism & anxiety.

3) The way we handle bullying, I think that speaks for itself.

Most of this has to do with money, but…
1. Small class sizes. It is literally impossible to make every child know math when there are 30 in one room who don’t want to be there.
2. Practical lessons with hands-on learning. Anecdotally, I know that teachers often have to pay for supplies and resources in order to accomplish lessons for different learning styles.

Not NO homework, but homework that isn’t scored for the student’s final grade. As a teacher, I use homework assignments to help my students practice what they already learned. Grades aren’t attached, just participation.

Exams. They are the dumbest method of measuring someone's intelligence ever devised. Always held in the baking hot summer, revision always interferes with young people's lives - yet here we are in a progressive society in the 21st century STILL using the damned things rather than a continuous assessment of a pupil's work as a means to determining someone's entire future. Have a bad day, stuff up an exam, and it could radically change or alter the course of someone's life - where oh where is the sense in that?