End of Junior Year by: Kellen Pluntke

My junior year is over.  I don’t know how it happened, exactly what happened, or how I got through it, but apparently I did.  With all the issues I have run into in, but especially off school grounds.  It has been a very rough year for me personally, as well as for some of my friends.  I have talked about how some of my friends ended up in mental hospitals in the fall, and how I kind of fell into a dark hole and stopped trying in school.  This, and some issues with the law and school because of being with the wrong people at the wrong time diverted all my attention away from my books.  I had a C average for the first semester, which didn’t even bother me at the time because of everything else, but I am normally an A- kind of kid.  I was lucky enough to have a great connection with some of my teachers and administrators, so I got through that period of this year.   These teachers were able to help me because through me telling them, they knew what “kind of kid” I was, and they were able to help me out accordingly.

           

            However, I did not tell all my teachers what was going on in classes that my grade didn’t drop in.  I did this as sort of a mini experiment to see what they would think when at the end of the year, I was planning on sitting down with a few of them and telling them and asking if they knew this information earlier, how would it effect how they treated me in class.  Before I could even start these conversations I was planning to have, one of my teachers who I love, but had not told yet asked our class “What group do you fit into in this school?” and set up a discussion.  So, I really told them.  I told her how I’m not part of the group of star students, but quite the opposite.  My teacher was pretty shocked, and asked to speak with me after class.  This teacher told me that if she knew that I was one of those kids that had all this stuff going on, she wouldn’t have pushed me as hard.  So this is the message I give to teachers.  Please do not look over the kids in the back of the class who are the “troubled students” because none of that means anything.  Every student should be held to the same standard and treated like every other student in the class no matter how they appear to look, or talk or anything like that.  All kids have the ability to succeed in class, and should be encouraged to participate.  Keep students backgrounds and personal information they tell you in mind when helping out with their work and such, but don’t let it lower your standards for them.