When I ask myself how I am doing in school, I would say absolutely great grade-wise, but stress-wise? That’s a whole different ball game.

Everyone always says junior year is the most difficult, and I agree. The work is decently hard, causing me to get confused, but I can consider that normal. Are other grades hard as well? Absolutely, it’s just the workload. That brings me to the actual topic of the story, do teachers have too high expectations of students? Some teachers definitely do, in my opinion.

Personally, there has only been one night so far in the school year where I didn’t have homework, not including the first week of school. That’s a hefty amount of work to be done at home. While I also have other activities going on outside of school, some days are easier and some days are more difficult.

Not every student has the same schedule or the same classes, and that explains why some people feel the way they do. A student, for example, could have an easy class and get their work done in class or very quickly at home. On the other hand, another student could have the same class that seems harder for them and have to take longer on doing their work in class or at home, so to some students, the work is harder. No student is the same, and expectations should be set differently for each individual student.

That also brings up the idea that teachers all have different expectations and to some students, they may seem harsher than others. Again, something could be extremely easy or difficult for a student, and a teacher rarely ever changes their whole lesson plan to accommodate a singular student. Then the student possibly could feel less because they’re not learning as efficiently as their peers, causing more complex issues. Some believe that these teachers simply do not care, just refuse to teach or believe the newly implemented after-hours tutoring can fix what these teachers aren’t properly teaching. This is so completely wrong though. Unfortunately, teachers can’t change their lesson plans to accommodate just one singular student. They have their set lesson plans and have to generally stick with it. If I had the ability to change how it is, I would have it where teachers could teach at their own pace and not be condemned to their weekly schedule.

Some of the easiest years of school work were when COVID-19 hit. Personally, if I had applied myself, my grades would’ve looked a lot better. Teachers are now trying to get out of their COVID-19 ways of teaching and bring back their normal curriculum to make school as normal as possible. While it is great that not every assignment I have is online, and I don’t have to hunch over a Chromebook to complete it, this transition from online work last year to paper this year was rough around the edges. There wasn’t really a smooth transition to get students used to the work. This isn’t necessarily the teachers fault, though, I can only assume that they’re feeling stressed about making the switch work again.

I’ve had times in classes where the paper isn’t what the teacher planned, and they found it on their laptops and gave it to us virtually. That’s a huge perk to always have the virtual and physical form of an assignment. Instead of doing one form of an assignment, having the option is so much better. I like having options with how I learn.

Teachers are genuinely trying their best to make school normal for us again; however, I’m not sure if it’s working for every student.