As students of the 21st century, the educational system sets us up for failure by guaranteeing teachers that they won’t be fired from their jobs. According to Press Telegram, only 1 out of 1,000 teachers are fired for performance related reasons because tenure assures them of their job.

Tenure may be great for teachers, but not for students. Especially when the teacher is ineffective at doing his/her job. It’s a waste of our time, affects our testing scores and wastes the school’s money. It frustrates me when they get paid to be lazy, while we have to go through their tortuous and long “lessons.” We spend almost our entire life in school, so we deserve the best: teachers, classrooms, equipment and lessons..

I find it ridiculous how some teachers do not teach what is needed but give you the work and expect you to finish it on your own. Students need to be engaged to learn, not “book work.” Assigning a packet and a due date doesn’t help anyone learn. Advanced or not, all students learn differently. I think some teachers should do their jobs better, instead of sitting around doing nothing. My appreciation goes out to the teachers that love their jobs. Those who strive to help the students understand the material. The ones that already have lesson plans made for the whole month. The ones that stay after-school or during lunch to help students with understanding and completing their work. The ones that teach the lesson multiple times to make sure that everyone gets it. Those are the teachers worth keeping. They deserve to be called teachers.

It also bothers me most, when ‘teachers’ give random A’s to students in their class because they didn’t teach anything or assign work. Handing a free grade is just insulting. One, it’s not fair to the hardworking students who do their homework on time and study the day before a huge test. That’s also bad teaching because they’re basically telling their students that life will hand you whatever you want and that you don’t need to work for it. Two, it isn’t fair for the teachers that hold students accountable for their grades. As those teachers give grades to their students who have worked hard for, the lazy teachers are casually entering random grades.

I know firing a teacher is a long and difficult process, but why keep a teacher that doesn’t even do his or her job at all? Throughout my life, I’ve seen many dedicated and compassionate teachers lose their jobs. So why not give the frivolous teachers a pink slip instead of giving them to the diligent ones? I may sound harsh, but if you don’t love your job you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

While teachers pass out report cards, the only thing you can think of is the small printed letter on that slip of paper that can determine your life forever. And getting the grade you never anticipated could go in two different directions. A grade that you worked hard for and really deserved, or a grade you didn’t deserve but was given to you anyways, or maybe the grade you received was overall pretty accurate depending on the type of student you are. But with this in mind, how do you know if teachers are giving you the grade you actually deserve, and are they? Let’s put it this way, not really.

As students, the best we can do to ensure a fair, good grade, is to show up to school, do our work, participate, and try our best to maintain an A. Though, there have been times where even our best, still can’t produce a good grade and fit those standards. Have you had someone tell you most of your life to try your best, and that effort and trying is key to success, then our best still isn’t enough to get that grade we actually anticipated? It’s nothing but a contradiction in and of itself. Weren’t we taught before high school that if we come to school, learn, and prove we are average scholar students that we can receive the grade we want? It doesn’t seem like that same old story anymore, does it? So when teachers input your grades do they actually consider that you did the best you could, and though you put in the effort it still wasn’t good enough for those percentages and categories they put in place? Well, yes.

Of course almost every student wants to say that their grade isn’t right and that teachers aren’t giving us the grade we truly deserve. Sure for a few of us that might very well be true. However do we really take into consideration that as much as we think we’re not getting the grade we deserve in that negative mindset (the idea that teachers are out to get us), but are instead seeing that a lot of teachers give us multiple opportunities to get a better grade and randomly boost our grades given the effort shown in class. So thinking back to the idea that our best isn’t good enough, maybe we students aren’t actually doing the best we can do and our teachers realize that, which is why we get the grades we do. There’s a chance that maybe you don’t see the good in your teacher giving you the grade you got. So until we realize the good in the bad, lets keep thinking we should have gotten a better grade.