When it comes to life, you need someone to talk to. There are 8,766 hours in a year. You spend around 1,080 of those hours in school; that is for just one year. You spend 13 years in school, not including college but counting kindergarten. That means you spend somewhere around 14,040 hours of your life in school, which is around a year and a half total. So I think in that time you should be able to talk to someone at school, like teachers or staff, if something is on your mind. Now, the teachers try. To me, that is all that matters. To know that someone is trying to help you out, really helps you out. Do I feel like I can tell the teachers and staff members at Dimond my deepest and darkest secrets? No. This is simply because I feel if you tell one of the faculty members, somehow all the rest find out. If you feel as though they are going to go email the information to every other teacher you have, why would I talk to them? For some people, trust probably does take a part. Junior Nikki Lariviere said, “I think I can talk to some, but not all of the staff members or teachers.” Junior Kenzie Lamoreaux said, “Well, it’s useful when I can sometimes. Just that seldom urge that you have to talk to someone. It’s nice to have a teacher you can trust.” Lariviere said, “I have other people to talk to so it doesn’t bother me not being able to.” If a kid has other people to talk to, great. What if they don’t? Than they go on with their school day with thoughts jumping around in their heads, not focused on their school work. Who knows, maybe this is why some people don’t do so hot on their tests? So how can teachers focus their students? Let the students get their thoughts out. What if the teachers’ students have no friends to talk to? Let the students talk to teachers. If the students can’t? Build the teacher and student relationship so students can! I think a great way to build the teacher-student connection is through a youth-adult partnership. This is when a younger person and an adult team up and get involved in worldly issues like global warming, etc. Yeah, there are clubs with teacher sponsors that get out and do things. But this doesn’t provide a student with time to connect with their teacher. If a student wants to be able to connect and share their thoughts with a faculty member, why not give them that option? Junior Morgan Deakin said, “Some advice would be not [to be] so judgemental even though we may dress in dark clothes or in [different] stuff or well anything; it doesn’t mean we’re bad kids. They need to give everyone a chance.” Some students could care less if they could talk to adults at Dimond. For the people who would like to be able to, why not let them? Lariviere said, “Don’t be as judgmental!” Now why would a student feel as though their teachers judge them? Maybe because the either do or they give off that vibe. That vibe needs to be abolished. Junior Brea Martucci said, “I don’t like talking to the adults. They need to be more fair, we’re growing, we have jobs and they pack us with homework, they need to give us chances.” Sophomore Tracii Kohler said she can’t talk to her teachers because, “If it’s personal I don’t want them telling my parents.” If it is something serious that teachers find out, that is exactly what happens. This is because there are certain laws which demand teachers inform other authorities about information that is serious. However, there are also confidentiality rules in which some information can remain private. Some kids aren’t close with their parent(s) and when their parent(s) find some things out it could even make their relationship more distant because the parent(s) may just not understand. Maybe the issue found out by the teacher is caused by the fact that the student feels as though they have no one to talk to, so they get their thoughts out some other way. You just never know. So why not get rid of that possibility? And give them someone to talk to. I feel as though every young person needs an adult figure in their life because they have years and experience. An adult figure for either inspiration or just an ear. If a student doesn’t have that, a teacher could be just that. Ageism could even play a part in the relationships at Dimond. Faculty members do have age on the students. I feel sometimes as though this may cause a sense of superiority because of older peoples’ thoughts that “they know best.” Maybe one thing that could happen is the faculty members could get on the “same page” as the student and cause them to relate a little better. If the thought that the faculty members “know best” plays a part, then the thought that teachers are so judgmental is true. If the faculty members think they know best, then they are judging students on their knowledge and age. Yeah, a lot of the time they may know best, but give the students a shot and hear them out. Overall, I feel as though the teacher-student connection should increase. A student shouldn’t have to spend around a year and a half of their life with a sense of solitude and feeling like they have no one to talk to. If a teacher was really looking our for their students’ best interest, they wouldn’t want that.