Spend a Day in Our Shoes by Matthew

Spend a Day in Our Shoes by Matthew - January 2015 Scholarship Essay

Spend a Day in Our Shoes

If I could give my teachers one piece of advice before I graduate it would be to spend one day in our shoes. I believe every teacher should be required to spend one full school day in the shoes of a student. They should sit in our classes, listen to lectures, do our homework, and eat the food provided. I think they would have a better understanding of what we need if they spent a full day in our shoes.

By spending hour after hour sitting in our classes listening to lectures teachers would appreciate our need to get up and move. It is difficult to pay attention when we haven’t had a chance to move our bodies or speak to our peers. Our brain stops hearing what our teachers say after a while. Teachers would understand that we have other demanding classes if they had to complete all our class work and home work, even if it were only for one day. It seems that teachers think their class is our only class or certainly the most important class. We want to give our all. We want to be successful in every class. But it is so hard to keep up with basic classes, honors classes, and dual credit college classes all at the same time. And in the middle of the day, when we are starving and needing good food choices to nourish what we lost in our early morning workouts, we go to the cafeteria to find mystery meat. Maybe if the adults had to eat the type of food and portion we are served, our food quality would change. I am 18 years old and 6 ft tall. I do not eat the same amount as a junior high student. I realize there are guidelines our cafeteria must follow but surely a little seasoning is allowed. The last thing I would like our teachers to do is to go to our extracurricular classes or games on the evening they walk in our shoes. I would like them to leave school on a school bus having only eaten the lunch provided. I would then like them to go to a basketball game and give their all. Then when they get home they would need to complete our homework.
Teachers work so hard and we appreciate all that they do. My suggestions aren’t to punish them. It’s just to open their eyes to the world through our eyes.