In Lee County Middle School (West) many are struggling with lockers. We have to carry around 4 Binders, A notebook, a behavior tracker, a Chromebook, and a water bottle (if you have one). We have to carry all of this from 8:30am through 2:30pm with no locker breaks in between classes. 

The problem with this is 

-1. Chromebooks are expensive. If you drop one while carrying this unstable stack of items and it breaks, you could have to pay 300$ to the school.

2. Water bottles. Carrying a water bottle in itself is okay, but with a Chromebook it’s more of an issue. If our water bottles spill or leak open onto our Chromebook it could ruin the computer’s keyboard again, causing us to have to pay money to the school.

3. COVID risks. Lockers are very grouped together, with top and bottom lockers. In the morning or afternoon we are all crowded together tightly, half of us not wearing masks. It’s generally uncomfortable and it causes health risks because of the well known virus spreading around.

4. We don’t have a choice. I have asked my teacher if we could not use lockers, if we could just use our backpacks instead of lockers. My teacher said no, giving me no fair reason as to why.

5. Organization problems. This year, may teachers have said we should be more organized this year, but with lockers and carrying around big stacks of items it’s quite hard to stay organized. Your pens and pencils will be all over the place and get lost, papers are going to be shoved into binder pockets while you struggle to collect your stack, your water bottle will spill all over the place while you try to close it, and more.

6. Opening lockers. Almost half of the people I know can’t even open their lockers or they struggle to do so. A lot of people spend more than five minutes struggling and struggling, it’s even harder when you have someone standing above or below you constantly bumping into you. 

7. Forgetting items. We are children, ages 11-14, so we tend to forget things. When we are using backpacks, you have everything you need for class. But, with lockers, you tend forget items you need for class in your backpack, which has been stuffed into your locker, such as your tracker or your pencil case.

There are plenty solutions to this though, such as 

1. Giving us a choice for using or not using lockers. This will cause less people to be crowded around lockers and make students who are uncomfortable with lockers more comfortable.

2. Allowing us to take items we don’t need out of our backpacks (such as phones) and carry our backpacks throughout class.

3. Give us a locker break after or before lunch. I know that eighth grade gets a locker break like this, causing them to only need to carry about two binders.

As you can see, lockers are a real pain to use and these problems could be solved or we could at least get a reason as to why we don’t have a choice anymore. I am trying to be mature and civil about this but these problems need to be fixed, because I am not going to pay 300$ for a Chromebook I dropped from my giant stack of items.