Dear Superintendent Licata, Governor Abbott, and Parents,

Education should be about exploration. We want to go to school to connect with people, discover things, and learn. We want to feel inspired when we walk into a classroom.

We can’t now, because the rigidity of the new lesson plans and rules makes it almost impossible to explore new ideas, and the dullness of slides and pointless tasks pushes students farther away from learning.

It is when we are young that our love of learning begins. If students who are eager to learn are struggling to stay interested, what happens to students who already have a hard time connecting with school?

We want to go to school and remember why we love it.

We know something has to change.

We are ready for change, and we are not the only ones.

This is what school feels like to us now:

 

WE MISS WHEN OUR TEACHERS COULD ACTUALLY TEACH US

The teachers are reading slides. They can’t choose what to teach us. We have, like, the same lesson every day.

It’s so uninspiring and honestly monotonous to go in and do the same thing every single day.

One student said:

“I walk in with dread, knowing today will be another day of reading from the exact same Google slide presentation.”

We miss when we could listen to a teacher tell us about interesting things, things we cared about. When we could hear about the hidden meanings and power in words on a page.

We haven’t felt that way in a long time now, ever since the slides came in.

We want to feel inspired when we’re in class.

 

THE SLIDES AND LEARNING GUIDES ARE OFTEN WRONG

The slides are wrong often. Sometimes the learning guide and the slides don’t even match.

In social studies, we see spelling errors and mistakes all the time.

In Spanish, there are translation errors.

In French, one student saw what appeared to be an AI-generated image in the slideshow.

On September 1, a class was given a science slide with multiple spelling errors and messed-up images.

We experience this constantly.

We are being told to follow these lessons, but these lessons are teaching us inaccurate material.

 

WE WANT TO ACTUALLY LEARN, NOT JUST MEMORIZE

One of the best parts about school has always been engaging with material that sparks curiosity.

Dumbing down the lessons we are taught doesn’t bring us to grade level.

Education must be an exploration, but right now it feels like memorization.

We worry that the students who come after us will never get to experience that same joy of discovery.

In one English class, we’re reading Don Quixote, but they only have us read portions of the book.

We’ll read three chapters, skip the next chapter, and then continue.

You don’t read it all the way through.

You read the summary instead of the book, and then analyze the summary instead of the actual content.

You could finish a book cover to cover and only read half of the chapters in it.

 

CLASSROOMS HAVE SO MANY RULES THAT IT’S HARD TO LEARN

Our teachers are so micromanaged.

There are so many little rules, and we feel like those little rules are part of what is making education worse.

We have posters telling us that if someone from the district comes in, we should be leaning forward and nodding at all times.

Teachers are supposed to move a clip constantly, depending on if “A” or “B” students are supposed to be speaking, thinking, writing, listening, or reading.

They have to set so many timers too.

We can’t focus on learning if we’re focused on following every tiny rule.

Instead of discovering, we’re complying. Open Letter from FWISD Students

 

THE WALKTHROUGHS STRESS US OUT TOO

“A few people came into one of our classrooms and stood there with clipboards, whispering to each other. Our teacher was stressed. It was very intense. I hated it.”

Those are one student’s words, but they reflect the experience we all go through.

When an announcement comes on saying, “We have visitors from the district today,” it changes the atmosphere for the whole day.

We know we’re supposed to stay focused, but it is hard not to notice strangers standing in the classroom, judging our teachers and us, writing things ominously in the corner.

Another student explained it simply:

“I’m scared because you’re walking in and you’re writing stuff. It feels like you’re expecting them to fail too.”

 

WE CAN SEE WHAT THIS STRESS IS DOING TO OUR TEACHERS

What’s more disheartening is seeing teachers that we love and have formed relationships with crumble.

The learning environment feels fractured because of the stress everyone is under.

If your teacher has to calm themselves down in the middle of class, how are you supposed to learn any material, let alone something complicated?

Our teachers look worn out every day too.

We don’t like seeing these people we love in these positions.

Having stressed-out teachers makes us students stressed out too.

These are people we care about, and they are a huge part of why many of us loved school in the first place.

 

THE LIFE HAS BEEN DRAINED FROM OUR CLASSROOMS

One of our classrooms used to be dimly lit with string lights and colorful decorations.

It was warm.

It was beautiful.

It was the perfect place to learn.

All of a sudden, everything changed.

The overhead lights were on. So much of the color was gone from the walls.

The environment became immediately overstimulating.

It was so bright and so empty at the same time.

It became harder to concentrate.

Our room that had been filled with laughter and learning and joy and collaboration became stifled overnight.

That might sound like a small thing.

To us, it isn’t.

The classrooms where we spend our days should feel like places where we think, create, collaborate, and learn.

We spend almost 40 hours there a week.

We want to see the life come back. 

 

WHAT WE ARE ASKING YOU TO DO

Give our teachers room to teach.
Let them use their own judgment and respond to the students in front of them.

Our teachers are professionals. Please let them do their jobs.

Make sure the materials we are required to use are accurate.
Please review the slides and learning guides before they reach our classrooms, and fix mistakes before students and teachers have to find them.

Let us engage with what we are learning.
Give us time to read, discuss, ask questions, go deeper, and explore ideas instead of always moving to the next required task.

Change the way walkthroughs and inspections are happening.
They should not make the entire classroom tense or make teachers and students feel like someone is waiting for them to do something wrong.

Pay attention to what this pressure is doing to our teachers.
When our teachers are worn down, we feel it too.

Please listen to them before more teachers reach that point and leave our schools forever.

Let our classrooms have some life again.
Let teachers create spaces where students feel comfortable, collaborate, focus, and want to learn.

Most of all:

LISTEN TO THE STUDENTS WHO ARE LIVING THROUGH THESE CHANGES EVERY DAY.

We are the ones sitting in these classrooms.

We know what they felt like before, and we know what they feel like now.

We are telling you because we care about our schools, our teachers, our classmates, and the students who will come after us.

We want to go to school and remember why we love it.

We want our teachers to be able to teach us.

We want school to feel like a place where curiosity is encouraged instead of controlled.

We know something has to change.

We are ready for change, and we are not the only ones.

One of us said it best:

“I won’t let my younger siblings go through this.”

 

Please listen to us.

 

Sincerely,

The Students of Fort Worth ISD

Eve F. 9th Grade

Charlotte H. 12th Grade

Charlotte W. 12th Grade

Ella L. 12th Grade

Margaret P. 9th Grade

Jay A. 12th Grade

Christian M. 12th Grade

Andrew M. 11th Grade

Edward R. 12th Grade

Allis C. 11th Grade

Caroline W 11th Grade

Elle S. 11th Grade

Madeline R 11th Grade

Leilani I. 11th Grade

Samuel G. 12th Grade

Walker M. 12th Grade

Abigail W. 12th Grade

Jovie P. 12th Grade

Lillian L. 11th Grade

Jack L. 11th Grade 

Stella S. 11th Grade

Traneya D. 12th Grade

Hendryx J. 12th Grade

June I. 12th Grade

Hudson P. 9th Grade

Findley M. 10th Grade

Hunter V. 9th Grade

Charlotte L. 5th Grade

Sam H. 11th Grade

Camila S. 4th Grade

Sofia S.  3rd Grade

Liam D. 3rd Grade

Aria F.  7th grade

Bell B 11th grade

Nellie B 8th Grade

Graham B 8th Grade

Winnie B 5th Grade

Lola C.  6th Grade