We recently started Florida state mandatory mental health lessons. This sounds like it would be a good thing considering the amount of teen angst out there, but perhaps it isn’t. These lessons are beyond pointless according to several LMHS students. The Nearpods “teach” us about things that are mostly common sense. High schoolers already know that they should try to get 8 hours of sleep and not get drunk.  Stop taking away class time for this.

What would be really helpful would be reducing the enormous amount of pointless homework that is given in so many of our classes. If teachers were assigned additional work during Thanksgiving break or a three-day holiday, they would freak out. Why should students feel any different? An anonymous student taking an anonymous chemistry class recently reported having to do 25 vocab words assignments.  However the teacher requires that a vocab definition take up a half page, be paraphrased and not an actual definition, contain an example, plus have four bullet points PLUS have a picture describing the vocab word.  This results in 14 full pages of busy work for an assignment that isn’t even tested.   Another anonymous student reports having an English teacher assign multiple assignments every weekend and even more during holiday breaks so that the student must work every day of the break.  Doesn’t the teacher get to enjoy the holiday break in peace?  Why shouldn’t the student?

Another thing that would help our mental health would be a decent starting time for classes.  Getting up at 5:30 am is not a healthy thing for a teen to do mentally.  We already get less sleep due to the homework requirements so why pile on by making us get up with the chickens.  Everyone in education knows this judging by all the TED talks on the topic, but nobody is willing to do anything about it.

Some students were asked about other alternatives, here is what they said:

Melody C. —  “I think that we should keep the lesson concept but make it more interesting. We could hypothetically have the lessons done in an auditorium assembly rather than in the classroom. This would make it less boring and more interactive.”

Bella M. —  “School is the main thing that causes me and a lot of other students to suffer from mental health issues. If they care so much about our mental health they should give us mental health breaks and no pointless busy homework. ”

Chloe C.  — “We should have our school therapist come and speak to classes. I trust what a licensed therapist has to say over random kids on Nearpod.”