Anela Pritchard Speech on Teaching

without consultation across the entire board. Anela Pritchard posted her speech to Facebook - the speech she says she was suspended from school for giving: I'm a decentlysmart kid, with some decently good grades. But sometimes I believe that, with the essays, worksheets and endless amount of study assigned tome eachday, that teachers secretly hate me, rather than actuallywanting tohelp me do better. Theymost likely, if anything really, just do it for the pay check. I'm not saying all teachers do, but the majority of them appear to be that way. I always think about how I do believe school is important, however I don't believe most of the stuff taught there is. Do I honestlyneedto know what a= 1+rnto the 2nd power is, go over the Treatyof Waitangi everyyear since I was literally5, or memorize the periodic table in order toget somewhere in life? Do I honestlyneedto know the structure of a seed and how it works and whatnot? No, I don't think so. I believe school should, instead, teach us more valuable information that we'll actually need for our futures. In High School, we should be learning about the real world, how to paymytaxes, applyfor jobs, mortgage my house, buya car, things that we will actually use in the future. Sofar, I've onlylearned that whatever I manage to get done in a short amount of time isn't enough. What's that? You did your homework, but didn't doone questionbecause you found it difficult and you were struggling? Well, there's a unsatisfactory for homework on your mid term report! Now, that's just not OK. What my point is, we all struggle, and work, and stress our selves over things that aren't important in the long run. Two years after High School, and the majorityof the students who've graduated have alreadyforgotten anything they've learned in the last four years of their school career. Stressing myself over end of year exams, because if I fail, I have myparents on myback, asking me why I didn't try hard enough, my teacher telling me I could have focused harder in class and mypeers simply telling me that I'm stupid? Ridiculous. I honestlyused tolove going to school. I thoroughlyenjoyed it, and it made me happyto goto school, tomeet friends, to learn things that I never knew. But the minute High School starts, it's either you fly, or you fall. Now I strongly dislike it, and want nothing to do with it. Some teachers are nice, there are a good few who are genuinely nice and want to help us but it seems that the teachers that are not willing to encourage and help me are all teachers of the subjects I'm not good at and it also happens to be that I don't enjoythem. It's unbelievable how some teachers play favorites. Theybelieve you can do better than your best? If theywanted me to do better, wouldn't they actually help me to understand? theywouldn't shove more work down my throat and expect me not tohave anytrouble with it. I'm not saying to treat me special because I struggle in the subject but because I'm a student who would like to learn things bya teacher, and not a book. Actually do the teaching that youwere taught and you are paid to do. Don't just give me worksheets todo and expect me to take a test onthe topic 2 days later. You know...the school system is reallyscrewed up...We have all these teachers that don't enjoy their jobs and are all angry about the cut backs in their paychecks. Making us feel like complete idiots and making us feel useless. Like it's our fault that we don't understand the work! Maybe some of us just don't understand it! Or maybe the teacher didn't teach it very well, but we're the ones dealing with the consequences of failure. It's teachers like this that make us students want toskip class and not go to school because we think we aren't good enough for the certain subject. Like we are stupid and will never understand it... Teachers are PAID to TEACH us.. not paid to hand out a piece of paper with words on it and sit around and do nothing!!!!!!! I'm not saying all teachers are bad, and I understand that us as students need to make an effort. But our teachers chose this career and need totryto cater for each individuals education. We spend 7 hours, 5 days a week, plus extra hours on top of that going over the days work, revision, studying, completing unfinished work and also homeworkgive, working to please everysingle teacher, the least the could do is have some understanding and simply teach.