Growing up in a highly Asian populated area, I knew many students who had these types of parents. It makes it really difficult for these children to express their personalities because they are always so focused on grades. In high school, I knew some of these students who were LGBTQ, and it was often very difficult for them with their relationship with their parents.

This statement is very relatable to many people, including myself. Many kids have trouble being themselves over fear of how others will react. Will they lose their friends? lose their social status? It can be very scary for anyone to be themselves. The easiest way is to find a group of people who you trust and have similar interests, like a team.

Standing up for yourself is the only way to get people to stop punking you. I often had to stand up for myself in school for being bullied, and it definitely helps keep people in their place and not talk about you. Being funny and making jokes could also help you lessen the effects of bullying.

It is really unfair that African Americans still face racism every day in the year 2025. I have not experienced much real hatred-type racism, but definitely experienced a lot of other hurtful forms of racism, like hurtful jokes. It is even worse to think that LGBTQ students of color are treated even worse by their peers. It is already so difficult for them, and this makes it much worse.

In school, my parents always challenged me and put me into the hardest classes they could. This included taking honors classes whenever I could and also taking the business program at my school, which lasted all four years of high school. I think it is good to be challenged in school, as it made me smarter and more resilient to academic challenges.

Public education is extremely important for socialization and is where most children learn to interact with each other. School allows children to build their personalities and create meaningful connections with many different people. Schools are the foundation of our children's lives and where they spend most of their time, which is why it is so important that they are run properly and fairly.

As a country, we need to acknowledge that trade work is some of the best work that can be done and often pays much better than other jobs with fancy degrees. Students should want to learn a skill or trade, and there should be less of a negative stigma on going that route. We need more representation for trades jobs, as they will always be needed.

Many minorities still haven't fully recovered from the years of abuse we people and the government put on them. This means that they have a disadvantage right out the gate versus everyone else in things like the search for a job. Schools need to do a better job at getting rid of that gap to give minorities the best chance to succeed.

I think that people focus too much today on things such as race, sex, and social class instead of just focusing on what will make our students safer, more comfortable, and learn better. I think we need to be less worried about offending each other and more worried about how we as a nation will fix our school system so our future children don't have the same issues we had to deal with.

It is incredible to think that not very long ago people of different skin tones were forced to attend segregated schools. It is even crazier to be walking among some of these people who had to deal with that. Although obviously not nearly as bad, there seem to be similar problems happening around the country where minority children and children of less money are forced to get worse educations than their counterparts, and that should not be the case.

Although I am no politician, it seems difficult as a collective country to change and improve upon the school system when it is individually run by the states. These states, which are very different from each other, often don't agree with each other, making school systems drastically different from state to state. I think there needs to be some kind of federal protection to ensure that no state is ruining our children's futures.

This section really hit home with me. It really shows that we can not set up our children for success in America with a failing school system. There need to be many changes made to help encourage and support students to set them up for future successes and not failures.

It is very frustrating to see that our education system is at a halt in improving the grades and achievements of minorities around the country. With so many new smart brains and all this technology, you would think we would be able to fix these issues and start to help and uplift different students in all kinds of situations. Unfortunately, that is not what we are doing right now, and there needs to be a change.

The American Dream is an interesting topic of discussion in this day and age. For my parents, the American dream would have been prevalent with many people coming to America and successfully creating stable and nice lives for themselves. However, it seems to me as though the American dream has died down quite a bit recently, especially with the new immigration laws. I would love to see our country return to a place where the American dream is still alive and well.