Mental health is important: Children are growing into adults. Changes are happening. Hormones attacking our brains. We feel sad, angry, and depressed at such a young age. The cause? Our school system. Schools need to have mental health classes for students. Test this out for at least 5 years and see the impact that is made. Keeping a positive mindset can help students achieve so much. I think this should be taught in schools. Motivation - schools pile too much pressure on peers these days. They give too much homework and force students to cram for tests. They force kids to study too often knowing that their teacher could give them a pop quiz. They give too much homework but give no attempt to motivate students into doing the homework assigned. Schools are one of the biggest leading causes of depression and kids with depression are lazier, not willing to do the work they are expected to do. Schools see students as robots that can type 2000 letter essays by themselves in the span of 40 minutes. Schools do such little things to help peers struggling with mental health. Schools' teaching style can kill off children’s creativity. Albert Einstein once said "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." Creativity and imagination are the keys to a better world. Effective schedule: start at 10:00-12:00 maybe later ( teens brain is not working properly at 6 a.m). That's why teens sleep late on the weekends. Their brains start working at 10 or 11 in the morning. An extra day off. Students get to pick what classes they want as early as middle school. My reasoning behind that is, It gives students time to see what they excel at early on. Helping them decide what they want to do in the future. Planning ahead and having a goal early on will set into the student's subconscious mind. Which will make them more likely to achieve their goals. Many studies have shown that dress codes mostly target women more than men. In other words, dress codes are sexist. Girls can’t wear shoulder-showing shirts because it will supposedly “distract the boys” like what? Their shoulders. Boys aren’t attracted to shoulders. In fact, no one is. And most schools don’t let girls wear shorts that are higher than the knees. In fact, some don’t let them wear shorts anyways. Like what are they supposed to wear then? It could be a really hot summer. Schools also don’t let girls wear ripped jeans. While a boy can be shirtless and schools won’t care a bit. And colorful hair is a distraction? Well, there are more distractions in the world and school should teach us to get over them. This is not a factory, we wear what expresses us.No two brains are the same. Parents with two children can confirm that. As Prince Ea once said, “Judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree it will think its whole life it is stupid”. Different people are meant to do different things. School isn’t preparing us for the real world. Instead of preparing us to be factory workers. Waking up at 7 am and raising our hands to go to the bathroom. The school doesn’t teach us to do what really matters, like how to survive. It's not just the high schools that are bad, middle school and elementary as well. We live in a digital age. We need our education system to adapt to that. Schools should expose students to multiple fields. Students should only be worrying about learning and not about getting great grades. Teachers make a big impact on a student's life. A good teacher can make you love the subject or at least be interested in learning it and a bad teacher can make you hate the subject. I think the good teachers need more salary as they are a huge role-model in our future generation’s life. - 12-year-old Thanvika & Echo