Back in 2009 at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, President Barack Obama addressed an inspiring speech to students all across America, from kindergarten through 12th grade. In the speech, he explained the importance of education and the role of students in the educational system. Specifically, he suggested that students should fulfill their responsibilities by exploring what they are good at. Once they have found their potential, they need to equip the knowledge and skills through education to continue pursuing their dreams. At the same time, students would face challenges at school. President Barack Obama advised students don’t give up on themselves even though there are many obstacles in front of them or obstacles might be too difficult to handle. Instead, students should view the obstacle as an opportunity for reflecting on their learning and growing from it. What are the obstacles students might have and how students could overcome those obstacles? Obstacles at school could be discussed from three perspectives, including time management, academic learning, and social relationship.
The issue of time management would be the first obstacle for students beginning middle school because students are getting more assigned homework from school every day. Statistics from Development Academy show that 82 % of people don’t have a time management system, which greatly affects their work performance. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs. The secret to his success lies in his time management skills. Every single day when he wakes up, Elon Musk makes a list of what he should do and identifies what tasks are the most important. Once he figures this out, he then assigns tasks to 5-minute time slots in his calendar. Within these five minutes, Elon Musk is very focused on the assigned task without multitasking. How could students do school work efficiently and effectively while time is limited? Right after arriving home, students should sit down and think about school work and how much time they have to do the school work, next make a to-do list in terms of importance and urgency, and then set up a time slot for each school work depending on how big it is. While doing the school work, students should concentrate on school work without being distracted by other things. Balancing the time well would be a very big help in doing school work by thinking about the tasks thoroughly and identifying the priority of the tasks.
Academic learning is another obstacle students would encounter when the subject content knowledge is getting more complex and challenging. Too often students would choose to give up on themselves when they have failures. But this action would stop them from learning valuable skills and knowledge needed for the future. J. K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, was rejected 12 times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team; he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career before he became NBA’s greatest all-time player. Thomas Edison made 1000 unsuccessful attempts in inventing the light bulb. His vision on failure is that “ I haven’t failed. I have just found 1000 ways that won’t work.” It is very common for students to encounter obstacles and feel frustrated when they are learning new things, such as new math concepts or writing an essay. Teachers have the responsibility to correct their mistakes. But don’t let the failures define who they are or don’t let the frustration stops their learning. Instead, students should think in a positive way by taking failures as a second chance to learn. They can learn a lot from their failures than successes. Having failures in academic learning does not mean they are stupid students; it just means they need to keep trying many times and try harder to get a true understanding of what they are learning. Holding positive attitudes and beliefs, keeping trying without giving up, and reflecting on the previous failure is the key to solving the obstacles to academic learning.
Students also experience the ups and downs of friendship at school; sometimes they struggle with issues of social relationships, peer pressure. When students are getting older, they put more emphasis on acceptance from their peers at school, looking for a sense of belonging in the group. According to the dictionary, peer pressure is defined as “ a feeling that one must do the same things as other people of one’s age and social group in order to be liked or respected by them.” From the website of Choosing Therapy, 85% of high schoolers have felt peer pressure. Based on the data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics, around 20% of teenagers in the United States experienced bullying in 2017. It is a dilemma – Do students want to be a part of the teenager group doing something they might not enjoy or they don’t feel proud of? Or are students going to follow their true feelings even though they would be left out or picked as a target being bullied? It would be best to seek advice or support from parents, teachers, or school counselors when they encounter obstacles about friendship, bullying, or peer pressure. To cope with peer pressure, students could build friendships with the right person or develop an excuse in advance for why they cannot participate in something they don’t want to do. Peer pressure is something students should try to avoid at school as much as possible. When experiencing peer pressure, students need to learn to say no, stand up for themselves or walk away, and focus on themselves rather than doing risky behaviors.
It is typical for students to experience obstacles on their journey of learning at school. Learning obstacles of time management, academic learning, and social relationship are often discussed by students. To overcome these learning obstacles, students should set up the priority of everyday school work and give appropriate time periods to carry out these school work. In addition, students should have a positive mindset when having failures in academic subjects. Failures can show students which parts of academic learning need to work on more, which provides opportunities for learning more. Moreover, talking with trusted adults, learning to say no, building sincere friendships with a person, or developing an excuse in advance for not doing risky behaviors are keys to staying away from peer pressure.
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