Telling a Fish to Climb a Tree by Melody

Telling a Fish to Climb a Tree by Melody - October 2014 Scholarship Essay

Picture a place where you could tailor your teachings to your own brain. Being different we all have different ways of understanding and learning. To me this is what harms children the most when it comes to schooling. Personally, I struggled because I was not able to understand the way my teachers taught. I am a bright student, but my brain worked a little different than the everyday classroom.

Every night I would go home and spend hours teaching myself so that I could understand my homework. It was hard for me especially starting off in high school. You are suddenly put into this new place with so many people and activities that you must learn to balance your time wisely. But when you have to spend hours at a time teaching yourself nearly every single night, balance seems as if it does not exist.

This is why I believe an ideal classroom environment is formed around the student and their brain not the curriculum. Too often I hear teachers spouting off the usual “This is how this is supposed to be done.” I wish more teachers would sit down and go “Okay, that did not work for you, now let us try this.” The teachers that I learned the most from were the ones who would sit down with me and help me find a way to understand what would work.

We do not all function the same way and I believe that once we come to realize that we may actually have more success in our schools. My favorite quote is one from Albert Einstein: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” We should start taking this mentality in our schools because to me, if someone had sat down and realized my brain functioned a little different, I might have had the ideal high school education.