You gave us the Paws system. We understand that you think that this will help students manage their schedule. However…

Does this help us grow? Maybe we don’t need to be told when we have too much work. Mr. Kassissieh says that high school is a “journey of self-discovery.” Although we are blessed to have such an opportunity to expand our horizons, how can we discover who we really are when we have adults holding our hands the whole way through? How can we acquire grit? Tenacity? Toughness? How can we grow up into responsible citizens of the world if we have someone telling us when the going gets tough?

We understand that you don’t want students to be too stressed. However…

Has this intervention gone too far? Like it or not…stress is part of high school and pretty much every day life. It’s not like our boss is one day going to say “You know what? You have too much work tonight. You can finish that proposal worth 20 percent of your salary later.” High school should be a place where we are able to learn how to manage stress, and for it to be a safe place for us to try new ways to manage it. It shouldn’t be a place where stress is pretty much eliminated.

We like that you don’t want school to be our whole lives. However…

What does this mean for the teachers? Teachers aren’t trying to kill us, they’re trying to help us learn. But they can’t do that if they’re being told to ease up because a student has too many “paws.”

U Prep gives students the opportunity to be a varsity athelete, the lead role in the play and a member on ASB. Maybe instead of complaining that we have too much homework, we should manage our out-of-school commitments so we can learn to our full potential.

By Mahir Piyarali