Colorado Young Leaders: Youth Storytellers
Sagal Hassan
10/31/22
Aurora West College Preparatory Academy is teeming with bright minds and big dreams. These students are both creative thinkers, but more importantly, they have demonstrated that even when resources are limited, they will always find a way to complete the task as efficiently as possible. These young Spartans are valuable assets in the classroom as well as on our school’s courts and fields. I am convinced that had our school been provided with a little bit more funding than we currently receive we would achieve higher things. The same goes for any other school around the globe with brilliant minds but are not well-funded.
If money were not an issue, my ideal school would be one that provides its students with a wide range of club opportunities; at my school, for instance, we would have softball, football, baseball, and a variety of other sports. We would have nice jerseys and warm-ups, as well as enough in good condition equipment. Other than sports, we would have clubs such as cooking lessons for our school’s future chefs. If money were not an issue, there would be far more student involvement. We would have college tours throughout the year, more guest speakers, and increased parental involvement; for example, our school might hold more parent coffee morning meetings. The campus would be lively and warm, and there would be a lot of discussion about the various events that would be taking place at our school. This school would have enough funding to provide hands-on learning opportunities to its students, even if it meant leaving the classroom and driving somewhere far just to look at the sky with a telescope rather than watching someone do it in a video, or perhaps our students would host events rather than just participate in them. This school focuses on student support but also student involvement. The type of school I would want my future children to go to would be one that is inclusive, would embrace student diversity, and even hold events to show appreciation for the difference in their students. A school that learns about different religious holidays and celebrates them, one that recognizes the importance of mental health and provides anything for those in need of help. It is a school that has a lot going on, with tact and intentions of course!
Personally to be equitable means to recognize that not everyone is the same and that, in this case, some of us require more assistance than others. There’s equality, and then there’s equity. I strongly favor equity over equality. Equity at Aurora West is when our teachers invite students who are struggling in class to come in during their free period so that they can be helped. This is equity to me because teaching all students the same concept all day is equality, but not all of us learn at the same pace. For some of us, extra time or more practice is required. When our teachers take time out from their lunch willingly and help us, that is equity.
As a senior at Aurora West College Preparatory Academy, funding is extremely important to me because it determines what we can and cannot do in our last year of high school. As rising young adults, we want to do more than just sit in a classroom and take notes; we want to go outside into the real world and apply what we’ve learned in class. As seniors, we want to go and possibly shadow adults in our desired career field, as well as take field trips to hospitals, police stations, and other locations. We want support outside of our teachers like mentioned earlier some of our teachers take time out of their lunch to help us, perhaps we need paid teacher assistants. As student-athletes, we want better sports equipment and size-inclusive jerseys. For example, in our soccer jerseys, we have a lot of smalls and maybe three larges. We want a better field for the safety of our athletes and our opponents, they are holes out in the soccer field.
Our school currently does not have enough funding to provide us with a very memorable senior prom due to funding, it is what we make of it of course, and while that is undeniably true, it is difficult to see the bright side of this matter when we see our neighboring schools, opponents, and other seniors like us posting their venues as being at ballrooms, stadiums, and other such places. We even see senior trips outside of the country, to Disneyland and other locations around the world. while we are getting ready to decorate the gym for our prom, our school works very hard to encourage us to fundraise; we are making every effort, but only time will tell if we can save enough money. We have very passionate leaders here at Aurora West Leadership, and we have so many creative little things we can do to make an impact both within and outside of our school, but sometimes these ideas are not put into action due to funding, we do not have enough money for all the amazing ideas our students can generate, we have the drive to work very hard to fundraise for the things we want, and some of us have even made fundraising and selling worlds best chocolate and obviously, we knew it was for the same cause, but we compete because, at the end of the day, it encourages more people to want to fundraise by setting the tone of reaching a goal higher than the actual goal, so that even if the higher goal is not met, the goal may have been met. Long story short, funding limits students’ resources in the classroom, courts, fields, and even outside of the classrooms. We need money so that we can create memories so that we can learn beyond the classroom so and bring our brilliant events and ideas to life. Colorado schools deserve more funding.