Paly school board rep: ‘The sorrows of young Palo Altans’

Thank you so much for this!! Beautifully written.

Wow, this is a very powerful statement for parents and school leaders to read. I appreciate you writing this.

As a parent, it terrifies me to think about my kids being put through this madness, but I wish I knew what to do about it. The whole system seems sick and hollow. I know I can adjust my own expectations for my children by putting less pressure on them, but the pressure you described seemed to come from peers and the environment as much as anything else, and that seems like a harder problem to solve.

Great essay, thanks! One advice that is true to my heart. If you want to feel happy, do not compare yourself to others. A big problem in this town comes from people trying to outdo each other in various ways. Life should not be this way. We are all unique and should not try to fit into a mold. There is a college out there for every one. There is a unique path for everyone. Life has many ups and downs for everyone. Be happy in your own self, discover your passions and be confident to pursue them wholeheartedly.

Thank you for taking the time to write this terrific essay. I hope your passionate voice will be heard by the Board. I also hope you find the right college for you and can have at least four years to enjoy your learning. I went to Gunn 25 years ago and it was very different. I really hope we can get at least part of the way back to how it was.

Hang in there and keep pushing for change!

Thank you for taking the time to write this powerful editorial. I hope the Board hears you and changes the amounts of homework and busywork that seems to be abundant!

I hope for you that you find a college that suits your desire to learn. I went to Gunn (much less stress 25 years ago) but also found it to be not geared towards in-depth learning. College was a nice change from that.

Thank you for sharing this.

Carolyn

Here are some ideas to help move the needle on enforcement of the homework policy.

1. Community members can request that an item be on the agenda for a School Board meeting. I suggest that you request to put Enforcement of the Homework Policy on the next Board meeting agenda. Secure as much support as you can to speak to this topic. Speakers generally get 3 minutes – get your parents, other Paly and Gunn students, elementary school students, teachers, doctors etc to speak in favor of enforcing the policy. Challenge the Board to put an enforecement process in place and regularly report out to the community.

2. If an item is not on the agenda you can still speak to it in Open Forum Same as above – get your three minutes on the agenda.

3. Encourage students to withdraw their approval to get their pictures approved for publication. Send a statement that student achievement will not be celebrated until the homework policy is strictly enforced.

4. Work with adults in the community to vote against the parcel tax until the homework policy is strictly enforced.

5. Continue to use your time in Board meetings to speak on this topic. There will be people, including other students and Board members who disagree with you, don’t back down. You have support as well.

You can do this!

Wow! Not a strong endorsement for keeping my kids in this district. As a parentvof two elementary school aged children whose lease on a house I’ve rented for 6 years is up, I’m not even considering looking for a rental in town.
Even with the stress and burden of moving, this feels like my chance to get out now!

It is time to rethink the way we teach students. It is time to reevaluate and enforce our homework policy. It is time to impose harsher punishments upon teachers who do not comply with district standards such as not assigning homework during finals review time. It is time we wake up to the reality that Palo Alto students teeter on the verge of mental exhaustion every single day. It is time to realize that we work our students to death. It is time to hold school officials accountable. Right now is the time to act.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it Melissa Caswell.

Vote no on Measure A. Send a message that #RightNow is the time to act.

Brave and beautifully written – thank you.

One more idea – make a button “I comply with the PAUSD Homework Policy” and ask teachers to wear it as a sign of their commitment and compliance. Read the names of the teachers who refuse aloud at the Board meeting.

In my experience, writing letters to Board members does not help. Any action needs to be public and address the key benefits that the current Board is getting for their inaction – the parcel tax, the endless bragging about student achievement, and their lack of accountability for enforcing their own policy.

Good that you wrote this.

That students in their freshman year at college state that HS in PA was FAR harder speaks volumes.

Kids need time to be kids. Teachers, administrators need to get a grip. Schooling needs to move away from standardized (student) testing to teacher skill evaluation.

I’ll leave it at that.

Bravo! This is the best, most accurate, and honest essay on this subject that I have ever read. Good luck to you, Carolyn.

Thank you for adding a student voice to this ongoing dialogue.
Here are my suggestions based on this student’s honest feedback about her PAUSD experience:
1. Open Cubberley as a 6th thru 12th progressive school. Kids don’t need permission to enter a lottery but they do need permission to attend. We need smaller schools all around. Students are asking for choices and flexibility and acceptance.
2. school Credit for after school jobs and a partnership with local businesses. Teens need perspective and more interaction with their community.
3. Add mandatory rigorous P.E. back into the middle school and high school curriculum. Kids need exercise and physical activity and after school sports are parents only option when kids aren’t playing school sports or attending daily PE. (for the most part )
4. Give students the option to take 3 classes PASS/FAIL for those classes that a students finds too stressful/uninteresting to preserve a GPA and a student’s sanity.
5. Stop putting kids into smart/dumb classes…let kids work individually at their own pace challenged only by their own drive and curiosity. If you having a burning desire to do MORE MATH, than by all means do it but do it on your own time.

I know so many kind, hardworking, curious, bright Palo Alto kids. We cannot expect these studentswho are born and raised in Palo Alto to have any perspective on their current state of mind. Eliminate the objectives and let our kids craft a childhood they are proud of and excited about.

This is a very nice opinion, with points well made and good suggestions.

There is something happening in PA schools, though, that is even mentioned by Carolyn, and that I find difficult to address.

The schools can decrease the amount of homework and other stressors. However, what can the schools do about students who are prepped outside? Students that start prepping for the SATs in middle school, who are tutored before taking a class, who do all of this extra work that the schools do not organize, mandate or give? How do you get parents to give up on this if they are bent on having their students do it?

Some will say that parents/students should be made to disclose outside tutoring. However, how can you count on people actually doing the disclosing? I believe that the tutoring would continue and some parents/students would simply not disclose it.

Do you just think that, if the schools lower the amount of homework and other such requirements, such families will no longer come to Palo Alto for the schools?

I am really wondering if changing things can be entirely done by the schools.

@ mamabear…
A friend forwarded this article to me – it’s beautifully written and heartbreaking.

@ mamabear
I was renting in Palo Alto and when my landlord upped my rent yet again, I started renting in Menlo Park and put my kids in Hillview and then transitioned to private high school. Hillview is a WONDERFUL middle school and so vastly different from PAUSD. If PAUSD already not the right match for your kids for elementary, then consider moving. Lower rents (although that’s changing), excellent schools with none of PAUSD stress and there are plenty of private high school choices with outstanding tuition assistance. My kids school has given our family terrific tuition assistance and my kids are happy.

If you’re not up for the stress of the fight and Palo Alto doesn’t resonate as “your city”, then move. While I understand and respect the parents who feel that PAUSD is where they want to put their energy, it’s only for people who are truly invested in the city and have the bandwidth to help fix things. If you work full time and can barely make ends meet, it’s a tough, tough place to raise kids.

@Ohlone Parent

#2 on your list actually already exists, but the fact that you are unaware perhaps speaks to the need for Paly to increase publicity about their work experience classes. General Work Experience and Exporatory Experience offer students the opportunity to gain class credit for job and career opportunities in high school, and the instructor Meri Gyves works closely with local businesses.

#5 I think is simply unrealistic. Students have different levels of proficiency and interest, and sticking all students in the same class will create more problems than it solved. I say this as a student who has found myself in classes which were below my skill level. When a student believes that the material is too easy for them, it becomes incredibly hard to care about the class and feel like it is something worth doing. Luckily, I learned this lesson in my freshman year, but it was still a lesson that had to be learned. More important, I think, is fighting the perception that there are “smart” and “dumb” classes. If students feel like this, it is something that needs to be combatted at multiple levels. However, pretending that everyone’s children are the same is a delusion.

(The only thing I missed the last two years of Paly was, apparently, how to spell “walked.”)

Beautifully written and incredibly insightful. And just to add to the many layers of stress, these kids are also dealing with depressed and unhappy friends and acquaint enhances, which is an enormous burden.

On a different note, besides schoolwork, socially these kids are not being given the chance to develop friendships, make choices (even if they are sometimes bad choices), and just plain grow up. For my children, their friends are not available on the weekends because they have to do homework or SAT prep. It takes time and opportunity to learn to make lasting friends, and it is an important developmental task at this age, not to mention an important source of support. Not to be dire, but the lack of social skills carries over to college and adulthood. WAKE UP, Palo Alto parents. There are a lot of good colleges out there.

Well spoken from one who is obviously going through this.

Marc,

Can you please stop it with the “healthy” teacher communication.

Healthy in our sizable schools is to have effective organization and management which many teachers object to. Please report back to us, what PAEA considers to be heathy teacher communication.

That boat about students asking for improvements and nothing happens has sailed. Parents have been asking for this on behalf of their kids, and nada.

Please read the article, instead of insisting on your brand of help.

a few points:

1. proper behavior (e.g. non bullying, hard work & accountability) is 1st taught in families, not school’s fault that it’s in short supply in our culture

2. how w/out the so-called “segregation” by ability/skill you give more gifted students a chance to learn/achieve more?

3. the level of math taught is our schools is laughable, how a child can lag behind is beyond me

Madam
In case it’s not evident, there is no shortage of work ethic – maybe too much. Not only do thousands of students apply “hard work” but hard labor is common irrespective of the achievement level. Maybe that’s a hint for the improved performance you suggest.

My daughter who shares Carolyn’s PAUSD experience just forwarded this Modern Family video clip to me.

http://abc.go.com/shows/modern-family/video/VDKA0_k8411qeu

Pay close attention at 2:41 when the teacher says, “Our students are highly advanced, it’s nothing they can’t handle.”

Just because many students are able to manage our current system does not make it right.

Carolyn, I hope you will be able to look back and see the difference you have made for the students that follow in your footsteps. I know it is hard to see now but you have a great future ahead of you. You are already way ahead of the game and will go far with your passion to help others combined with the ability to articulate and solve problems.

Thanks for writing this, Carolyn!! You are so perceptive, articulate, and brave. So much sadly rang true, and our daughter is only in 8th grade in PA. She is drowning in homework every night, and the volume and the nature of some of it (e.g., excrutiatingly detailed rubrics that preclude one iota of creativity) are killing her love of school – and she is a self-proclaimed nerd! Previously an aspiring scientist, she has come to feel she’s bad at math even though she’s been getting As this year in the advanced track. A lot comes from comments the teacher makes about “those of you who are good at math” and the way he favors the “math whizzes,” but also knowing there are kids whose parents make them do extra math on the weekends. How can she not feel she’s falling short when she struggles through her homework and works hard to get those As??? She ended up in tears last night trying to write a speech for an English assignment, one that might be given at their June graduation. “Middle school has ruined my life – what kind of speech can I write?!?! How can I do this assignment without being fake?!?!” A big part of this is her own struggle with social anxiety, but even so, the HW load seems out of control. Don’t know how the kids in sports or drama manage. Indeed, music is her thing (if only she had more time to practice), and she is heartbroken that her best friend won’t be continuing on with her in band at Gunn because her parents won’t let her – they see band as a waste of an academic period. She needs to start taking computer science. What we have is a combo school and community problem—and the suicides aside, it is not unique to Palo Alto, just much worse here than in most other communities given the perfect storm of Silicon Valley and Stanford. The teachers are giving too much homework, no question, but they are also responding to certain segments of the community – parents who press unrealistically for achievement (there was a father at 6th grade back-to-school night already asking about calculus!) and who measure their own worth on whether their kids get in to Stanford, Harvard, and MIT. Anything short of that, and you’re a failure. Hooray, again, for Carolyn! I hope some of these teachers, school leaders, and tiger parents hear her voice.

Wow, this in an exceptional piece, the best I’ve read. Thank you, Carolyn, for your bravery and honesty.

We’ve experienced Paly for 7 years now. It’s true, there isn’t much time to socialize and relax for these children, thus, many of them have abnormal social skills.

And let’s remember, they ARE children, not mature adults who can deal with stress or quit their jobs. CHILDREN CAN’T QUIT SCHOOL.

The teachers need to ease-up! Yes, the experienced ones have, because they have seen the damage (they see kids “doing school”), but there are still many out there who expect too much from our students. Our students may be more intelligent, but that shouldn’t be a green light to overwork them.

Let’s not forget the excessive tutoring and parental help that is ongoing. It’s not just the tiger moms – even regular lane students are being tutored. This is not just a competitive game of students vs. students. It’s often parents vs. parents. Why? Because there aren’t enough good grades to go around. One Paly parent told me that after the first English essay was returned, it was obvious that she (with an advanced degree in English) would have to “overly proofread” her daughter’s papers for a good grade in the class, even though her daughter’s papers were deserving of an “A” for her age.

Completely agree with:

“Don’t forget to add the typical pressures of being a teenager into the mix (troubled friendships, relationships, jealousy, identity issues, drugs, alcohol, hormones, general mental health issues, etc.).”

and

” . . . when you are already struggling with such issues, being in a stressful, unpleasant, and competitive environment for nearly eight hours a day that continues when you arrive home surely cannot help.”

1. Let them sleep
2. Limit APs
3. Enforce the homework policies
4. Strive for teacher consistency (some are insanely rigorous)
5. End the zero period option

Excellent editorial Ms. Walworth. You have captured the sentiment of so many students wonderfully.

I consider what you said to match very well with Sir Ken Robinson’s speech last night at Paly. (His speech last night largely reflects his views given on his TED talk) Really the problems are cultural – we have a culture of homework overload, and intimidation/competition/oppression to get this mountain of work done.

It is not a culture of engagement.
It is not a culture support for students needs.

There is an aspect to this culture that our teachers simply don’t see, and it is unfortunate that they remain disconnected from the very students they are supposed to be teaching. Retaliation is an underlying problem that is experienced by many students. Once this happens, the students will forever view their teachers with mistrust and suspicion. This creates a toxic environment where many students won’t risk speaking out about the homework load. Won’t speak out about the classroom issues that cause disengagement.

I appreciate your brave stance on this issue. Brilliant.

Palo Alto needs a culture shift. We need a culture that reforms teaching methods; which focuses on the student having a great experience in school; which has high student engagement (ours is in the 60-70% from surveys – that is terrible). We need a culture where retaliation is unthinkable; where homework is not a substitution for higher level thinking.

Sir Ken had an interesting anecdote with an educator (paraphrased):

Ed.: How do we get students engaged in education, motivated to learn?

Sir Ken: Stop demotivating them.

Sir Ken: It’s really that simple. Kids want to learn. We are built to learn from birth. We learn to talk, to walk, to do all sorts of wonderful things…mostly we have to get out of their way, and recognize that kids want to learn.

It is long past time that student engagement becomes a priority. My car dealer measures satisfaction. My hotel. My Rental Car company. Even my cable company measures satisfaction. Their expectation is 100% satisfied. Why don’t we measure students engagement? Each and every classroom experience should be contributing to a students engagement.

Well said, Carolyn!

I am still flabbergasted that PAUSD elementary students have any homework at all. Back in my day, the 1970’s, we had none and scored just as high on State tests. And, we also had kindergarteners allowed to be kindergarteners instead of erzatz 1st graders expected to learn how to read before their brains wired up for it.

I am also outraged many of our high school students feel forced to take APs as sophmores and allowed to take more than 3 or 4 AP classes senior year. But, that’s what we get when PAUSD Board makes clear UC entrance standards – including Algebra 2 – are REQUIRED for graduation. Not every high school student needs or wants to go to a UC for crying out loud!

The Board only pays attention to voters. Just as City Council had a fundamental change last year, here’s hoping the School Board has a roll over.

What an awesome article. I’m glad you’re the student rep!

For all of us: Ms. Walworth has done a great service to Palo Alto by laying it on the line.

Let’s NOT add to her stress by making her responsible for anything going forward: she has eloquently, thoughtfully, and heartfully focused the issue for us. Now we (the adults) can retune our engagement on the issue to be more effective in addressing the root problem, which is:

PARENTAL ANXIETY ABOUT OUR KIDS SUCCEEDING

Most of us have worked hard _and_ had good luck to “make it” here on the Peninsula. If we grew up here, we remember a golden era, when working and middle class families could enjoy the good life here. If we’ve moved here recently, we’ve had a rare level of financial success and have chosen Palo Alto because of its (earlier) reputation as a good community with great schools.

Naturally, we want our kids to have a chance at a life that is equally or more “successful” than ours. That’s part of the American dream: each generation has better opportunities than their parents. Parents sacrifice a lot to give their children that potential future. It is a primary driving factor in who chooses to live in Palo Alto and in our parental focus on school performance. Earlier American generations were more likely to be able to pass a family business to their children. Currently, “successful” parents realize that their kids are going to have to forge their own success and that higher education is therefore critical.

The biggest perceived impact parents can have on their kids’ opportunities for success is to prime their kids for acceptance to an “excellent” college. The prevalent strategy has been to beef up the schools, maximize test score and grades, and amp up extra-curricular activities to build a perfect student and resume. Decades ago, this was a smart choice. Now, parents all over the world are doing this. This means that no matter how “perfect “ our kids are, they aren’t guaranteed a spot at the top.

This isn’t a system that can keep scaling: our kids can’t continually increase their performance level. It is literally killing some of them, and crushing most of the rest.

Perhaps we should try to change our target for “success” to include more self-knowledge and contentment, and less of the usual trappings of status. Your child doesn’t have to become an entrepreneur / executive / VC / innovator or anything else high-profile in order to have a good life. You don’t have to have their achievements to prove your success at parenting.

Set an example by being less competitive with your own peers, wherever you are in life. None of us can be, or should think we ought to be, at the top of our game all the time. A little failure and humility and a lot wider range of acceptance are important counter-balances to the current culture.

If you want to help our high school students get through this incredibly tough period of life, participate in toning down the expectations. Take a longer perspective and accept that not many teens can get through this level of rigor without mental health issues. Help your child find the “right fit” college, including the opportunity to attend a community college for a year or two of personal growth (and lower tuition) before transferring to a 4-year college. The four years of high school shouldn’t be the most critical make or break period in a long life. Brain development continues into the mid-twenties, so a slightly longer timeline for growing up and figuring out a life’s trajectory may be appropriate and necessary for many of our students.

Expect less and accept a wider range of outcomes. And don’t let the schools hire careerists who are driven to maximize a school’s standing for their own career status. Paly and Gunn may still look good academically, but clearly they aren’t the best choices for many of the student body.

Carolyn, thank you for sharing this and writing so honestly. As adults in this community, we are saddened by the struggles of our teenagers, and the despair they feel.

I attended a competitive graduate school (one that probably a lot of people/teens in this community aspire to). I think our school was wise to recognize the amount of work & competition people had been through, and to recognize the amount of talent in our classes. To have highly competitive people compete against each other academically again, was a set up for mental health problems in their students. I applaud them for giving us grades on tests, but then on our transcripts, our grades are listed as Pass/Fail. We had a Pass/Fail system, and they gave us one day off a week (so we can develop a life outside of rigorous academics). It was smart and it was healthy for the entire group of students to do it this way. Do the very top students feel cheated for not being able to stand out amongst their peers on their transcripts? Perhaps. But overall as a class, we were a very cohesive, close, supportive class that helped each other, and we were overall pretty happy. I believe the mental health of the entire class was improved by this system, and would have been worsened by an A+/A/A-/B+/B/B-/etc. traditional grading system. We did NOT receive an inferior education as a result of a Pass/Fail system. And we were less stressed, when I compared notes with friends who attended other graduate schools with a traditional grading system.

I think of Palo Alto students in the same way. The students in this school district are smart, intelligent, hardworking, and already excellent. They are good kids, and we need to support them. Rather than sort them, and make them compete against one another, year after year. Perhaps we need a different system. How different it would be if the high school transcripts instead read to College Admissions Offices: our students rank consistently at the top of the nation. You could not go wrong by accepting one of our students, and they will contribute great things to your college.

Thank you for sharing this.

I am happy that the notion of things starting in elementary was brought up.
I am not yet sure my child’s elementary school is looking seriously at this issue – especially when I see them promoting outside of school tutoring and enrichment classes and academic “camps”…..
Id rather see inspirational messages about taking a true break, connecting with nature, neighbor, fun etc.

The environment in the lower grade levels definitely seems nurturing and less stressful.
But seems like the teacher at the 4th and 5th grade level start to pile on homework and schedule lots of projects to prepare them for that pace of middle school. Some even love that they are known/famous for it. I do feel the teachers carefully teach to the individual without noting which students are more advanced and which might need more support or time. I know is also influenced by parents to – there are multiple audiences to message – teachers, kids/students, parents/guardians, administrators, the community etc. Lets start at the beginning and the end of their PAUSD journey!

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/03/16/guest-opinion-keep-calm-and-parent-on

Dr. Strassberg’s essay from last week is very wise and worth (re-)reading in light of Carolyn’s powerful essay.

I appreciate Carolyn’s calling out students’ monitoring, mockery and disdain for peers’ academic performance as what it is – intellectual BULLYING.
Maybe this needs to be the next frontier for raising students’ and teachers’ consciousness about Social Kindness.

I wanted to add that with the prize as a previous poster noted being admission to an elite college, I believe we are on the fast track to mediocrity. When we only recognize the good test takers, what are we missing? We are missing genius, creativity, possibly a great thinker. Students who don’t fit the mold but could contribute greatly might be the ones that the elite students and teachers are crushing.

Bravo to you for speaking out. I grew up in Palo Alto and went all through school in the PAUSD. I was what was considered an “advanced student” for many years until I began having issues that none of the administration wanted to deal with. I have a part in it, for sure, but the pressures and expectations were beyond my ability to deal with as a teenager. I am so glad that these issues are being addressed, as our children deserve to be treated with respect, not just as potential test scores. I am grateful for the education I had, but it was at a very high cost and I have suffered effects from the pressures for many years. I sincerely hope that in the future the children can get an education in the district not only academically, but as healthy-minded citizens who maintain their dignity and self esteem.

“Why is that not getting through to this community? Why does this insanity that is our school district continue?”

A complex set of reasons best summarized as a set of characters from film/TV and literature.

The students demanding to keep zero period are Tracy Flick from Election.

The parents are Wanda Holloway from the Texas Cheerleader Murder.

The teachers are Mr. Mackey from South Park.

The school board is Councilman Jeremy Jam from Parks and Recreation.

The superintendent is Mr. Hand from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Charles Young is Ferris Bueller from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Everyday is Charles Young’s Day Off.

With this cast of characters I think it is pretty clear why everything persists as it is. Carolyn when you get to college you can put all this behind you and forget it and join the ranks of PAUSD alums who feel that they survived and are just happy that they made it out.

I grew up in Palo Alto. It was a blast growing up there, and most of the kids who came through PAUSD did just fine out in “The Real World.” (I’m a Cubberley grad. Class of ’79). We were not buried in homework, had a balance that seemed to work, and I look back on my high school days fondly. Life is hard enough, and making kids bear the weight of the world – before they are even out IN the real world – is ludicrous – and soul crushing. This article stunned me. I had no idea things have gotten this out of whack. It seems like a simple fix, but apparently not.

@Redwood City Parent,
about short term “winning,”
I am with you on this, that’s why I put “winning” in quotes. I think you misunderstood me. But since we are discussing high school level and what comes right after, the short term effect is worth noting. It’s bragging parents in this community who get to proclaim their kid is into an Ivy.
Never mind some were heavily prepped for years.
Who knows what happens long term – of course, people succeed all over, in various universities, but the Palo Alto centric mode is Ivy or nothing. I actually have a kid in a so-called highly ranked top university that is non-Ivy and “friends” here put her down for it as one, for example, attended a so-called lower-Ivy. Now maybe you and I wouldn’t distinguish to that extent, or care about it, but some students here and some of their parents have been conditioned to actually think that the exact “rankings” shown in US News & World Report are absolute fact! Down to the exact numeric rank. Incredible, but also unpleasant when you have to deal with these people and their assured beliefs.

@ Sue and others

Things can still work out well for our high school students in spite of all the problems. My children who graduated from Paly from 2005 to 2014, have all been well. They never played the current game. They were not overwhelmed with homework because they refused to spend too much time on it. They were no pre-prepped and they did get Bs in their AP classes and then a 5 on the test, like many of the non prepped students. We could have decided it was unfair of course, but we refused to play along.

They went to good colleges, but were of course not in contention for “elite” ones.

Now, they are all fine. Happy, well adjusted, and productive.

It was hard at times not to be on par with the people paying the game. It is true, especially for me as a parent because I found so many parents to be so hung up on university brands, as well as judgmental, but we hung in there.

No regrets. No regrets about our approach to “doing high school” but also no regrets about attending PAUSD schools.

Mixed feelings about this… But I don’t think taking away grading curves or advanced classes is the solution.

I agree that we should accept and educate the full range of students.
However, keeping all levels of students in the same class (particularly in math) is not the right answer. Students who do excel naturally in math are very frustrated when required to go over the same material repeatedly.
The option to finally be in an appropriate lane in middle school comes as a tremendous relief after years of being bored.

I know this is not the popular opinion right now. But we are in danger of “witch-hunting” our high achieving students. Many of whom are not seeking to “compete” against anyone, but simply want to be challenged and learning during their school day also.

Being in the “regular” lane of a subject should NOT be a reason for ridicule or self-criticism. Having multiple lanes should be a great way for students to have the opportunity to learn at a pace that is appropriate for them individually.

Eliminating choices is not a good answer.

Grading to the curve is a problem, I agree.

These students should not be competing each other to get an A. They should be helping each other in the aim that they all get an A. The best teachers should be teaching to enable the whole class to get an A. That is the sign of a good teacher. If a teacher is unable to teach to the class to enable the whole class to get an A then that teacher is not a good teacher.

Curves are not helping anyone, just encouraging deceit and cheating.

Amazing article, incredible comments from so many people. Clearly this is an issue that should have been addressed but has not.

I worked hard to get Measure A passed the last time it was on the ballot – this time I will actively work to make sure it does not pass. I will continue to do this until the PAUSD School Board is able to address the myriad issues listed in this article as well as the many comments above.

Clearly hitting the board in the pocket book is the only way to get their attention.

I encourage anyone that is concerned to register your unhappiness with the board by VOTING NO on Measure A

Carolyn,

Thank you for this piece, and for sharing your pain at the loss of a fellow student and your call for action at the school board meeting two weeks ago. I am so sorry about what you have gone through, and about the stress that you have experienced in your school career.

I agree with you that we need to focus on the wellbeing of students in our schools, and to make concrete positive changes in the areas of homework, school start time, test and project stacking, counseling improvements, use of Schoology (which is essential to tackling problems of homework and test and project stacking), and ensuring that our curriculum challenges our students and supports them in success. We need to encourage and support healthy sleep, which is why I’m working for a district policy to eliminate academic classes before the start of the regular school day, in so-called “zero period”.

Many of these changes have been pending for a long time, and I have been frustrated with the pace of change. That is why I ran for the school board. I have recently been encouraged by developments such as Superintendent McGee’s leadership in areas like our homework policy and Principal Herrmann’s effort to bring block scheduling to Gunn. But we need to do more, and more quickly. I invite all members of our community to respond to Carolyn’s call, and to reach out to me and other elected officials and school district leaders to insist on real measurable progress on the issues of workload, stress, and sleep. We can do better than we are currently doing in providing our students a healthy learning environment.

Thank you for your service as the Paly rep on the school board, and I hope we will continue to hear your voice.

Best wishes,
Ken Dauber
kdauber@pausd.org
(These views are mine alone, and not necessarily those of the school board)

Ken,

A suggestion about laning, please consider introducing new metrics about laning (even if it’s just for show and tell at one of those never ending powerpoints for the board).

Is laning used to speed ahead or to engage students in for example Math and Science?

Are there any metrics for the Growth Mindset?

Powerful and extremely well written! Thank you for sharing. It is time to redefine learning and the high school year.

@Genius

Advanced classes aren’t for “genius” students. The fact of the matter is that students operate at fundamentally different levels across multiple subjects. I was in the highest math lane all through my time at Paly, finishing BC Calc in my senior year. If lanes are removed, then our schools will be catering to the lowest common denominator. My disinterest in history and English shouldn’t drag down another student who is passionate about those subjects. Likewise, my fascination with math and science shouldn’t force another student outside their comfort zone.

The reactionary viewpoint of “send the genius kids to private school” only further serves to segregate the kids operating at different levels. Furthermore, it fundamentally undermines the point of public school. Everybody should be able to receive an education that is engaging for them. PAUSD is capable of providing that. We should not be stuffing all our students into the same box with the objective of fooling ourselves into thinking that every kid has the same interest and ability in every subject.

The problem, as I believe I stated in an earlier comment, lies with the perception that you yourself are perpetuating. The perception that students who perform better academically are the “genius” children, and the ones who have trouble with some subjects are “non-genius.” That sounds like a marginally nicer way of saying “smart” and “dumb.” We should be okay with the fact that every student is different, and that Palo Alto has the resources to provide an education which caters to all of its students. If a parent has to believe that their student is just as smart as every other in order to feel happy, *that* is the problem we should be addressing. Removing lanes is an absolutely absurd idea.

Wow.

I have been a teacher in a play based preschool program in Palo Alto for many years. When children start preschool they are eager, curious, and excited to explore and learn through play. We work hard to nurture this curiosity and support their social and emotional growth, so they can grow up to be resilient, happy adults who can get along in this world, whatever path they take. It is disheartening to hear how all this natural eagerness and joy becomes stifled and crushed by their future school experiences. And there is no doubt that even at the preschool level, parents are starting to feel the pressure of system that is requiring more from its’ children than they should be asked to give. Carolyn’s article illustrates the true cost to the children. And for what? It is sad to think of young adults already so stressed and burned out by high school.

Most parents would agree that they want their kids to be happy more than anything else. I think we need to stop equating happiness with status and and external achievement, and instead ask what kind of childhood/ school experience creates happy, capable children who have an inner sense of strength and well being.

Although the challenging academic curricula may help prepare students for college, adult life and future sucess, the writer raised an excellent point by asking what kind of childhood memories will students have if they are under so much stress. As some adults realize years later that doing what you love as a career is just as important as making money, students must be taught this same philosophy at an early age. Not everyone is going to be or should be a CEO of a large company. Everyone needs to simply support and encourage all students to recognize their personal gifts and how to apply them in school and the workplace. It’s great that Palo Alto and Stanford enjoy such a positive and successful reputation, but these tragedies of lost young lives must stop. One intentional death of a child is one too many.

Thanks Carolyn! Best wishes for college and life.

The notion of weekend SAT prep starting in 8th grade, all-AP coursework and tutors every waking hour do a huge disservice to our kids.

I founded/co-founded multiple companies and was fortunate to have some amazing exits. I excelled at hard computer science and business problems because that was where my passion was – not because someone made me.

My parents had more wisdom that I could ever hope for – they helped each of their 5 children to find their passion and to excel at that passion. There was never pressure for zero period or all AP coursework or other Tiger mom nonsense.

Amazing and articulate and honest. Good luck to you.

Btw, Palo Alto is not alone. Did anyone watch the movie Race To Nowhere? This awful learning/competitive environment is an epidemic. My kids went to school in the San Ramon Valley Schools. The environment is the same, slightly less intense. Fortunately there is an amazing school in our district called Venture. It allows kids to move through school at their own pace with one teacher that oversees their efforts. So the intense stress of m-f schooling is gone. It’s a fantastic option when standard high school is not a good fit.

This problem falls squarely on the shoulders of the parents. Stop blaming teachers and school administrators. All of this pressure comes from the parents, end of story.

I am also a student at Paly, and I have to agree with nearly everything Carolyn says here. Although we are different people on separate paths (I think we have only shared one class together in the past), I have felt the same overwhelming emotions and ridiculous pressure that she has. It’s actually quite disconcerting that her words ring so true to me (and probably many, many others), because that shows that this is a widespread problem across Palo Alto.

Much of my stress this year comes from the vicious cycle of test after test after test. There’s no break: you try to understand one unit, struggle during the test, finally begin to grasp the material, but by then you’re on to the next unit and next test. In honors and AP classes in particular, the pacing is so fast that many high-achieving kids can’t keep up.

Of course, it’s very hard for AP classes to go any slower, considering the sheer amount of material that they must cover for the AP test. However, a way to reduce stress in those classes, or all classes, is to change the way testing works.

Much of the pressure from testing comes from the time crunch. Not only do teachers expect us to apply concepts to sometimes foreign-looking problems, they also expect us to do 20 difficult multiple choice problems and 5 multi-part free response questions. It’s extremely difficult to fully concentrate on the test when your mind keeps wandering to the amount of time that you have left, the number of questions you have left, and the appropriateness of the pace you are going at. Time pressure does not contribute to my understanding of the material: it just makes me anxious and depressed after the test when I think back on the amount of questions that I skipped. Maybe I could think of a novel, ingenious solution to that tricky problem if you actually gave me time to think.

Yes, I understand that we need to learn to deal with time pressure, whether it’s in preparation for college or the AP test or life or whatever. But sometimes the time crunch is ridiculous, but everyone just accepts it because all they’ve been taught in school is to just go faster, faster, faster. No one stops to examine exactly how sensible the time pressure is on certain tests, in certain classes. Here’s a guideline: if the timing takes away from the contemplation of the test itself, then students need more time.

Testing is definitely a large factor in student stress, at least for myself. On specific tests, it is often the timing that causes me to underperform. Teachers could address this by creating slightly shorter tests, or by allowing students more or “unlimited” time on each test (I know many would be willing to stay into the next period to finish a test).

Another solution is for teachers to drop the lowest test grade. That way, test scores would still reflect the students’ testing ability (not necessarily their academic and creative ability, but hey, what can we do about that?), but that would allow a bit of a buffer for the student who had to take a test while he had a fever, or it would calm the student who missed a big concept in one unit and got 50% on the test.

These are relatively small, feasible adjustments that I think would considerably reduce stress for kids in PAUSD, especially overworked high schoolers. I hope that people may understand my viewpoints and thank you for reading (it was quite therapeutic to write).

My daughter attends cupertino district elementary and am already worried how the middle school and high school pressure is going to be.
I had YOGA in my curriculum growing up in India and I feel we should introduce yoga or some form of meditation practices here in U.S. schools as well. It not just helps kids lead a healthy body but a healthy mind, and they learn ways of de/stressing and focussing better. I strongly advocate introduction of these aspects in school life. And can surely help with that.

Bee

Dear Carolyn,

Thank you for expressing so beautifully what I have been trying to express as a parent. I’m so sorry you are going through this and that we have failed to provide you with an education that supports children’s curiosity and creativity. Your essay will be very helpful, I think, in helping parents like me who desperately with to change the system for the better, to one that would have supported students like you. Please remember, everyone has their gifts, and our very narrow system has not supported you in finding yours. (I am incredibly impressed just by this essay you have written.)

I did just wanted to express something that you may or may not have heard, that college admissions really isn’t as competitive as people make it out to be. http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/20/college-admissions-the-myth-of-higher-selectivity/
In 30 years, you will not remember how you did relative to someone in a class. But you will remember this essay you wrote and how it contributed to the community in helping students who came after you. Thank you.

Consider community college for 2 years and transferring to a 4 year university in your junior year. No SATs are required. It’s SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper. As long as you graduated high school, they don’t care what your GPA was or how many AP classes you took. Nor do they care whether you were the captain of the basketball team or student body president, etc. Most community colleges in California have transfer agreements with CSU and UC schools, which makes it easy to transfer to a great 4 year university. A similar education for a fraction of the price and not a lot of stress… I don’t know why anybody chooses to go to a 4 year university directly from high school.

As somebody mentioned before… you end up in the same place. When applying for a job, nobody will ever ask you what your grade in AP English was or even what your SAT score was. I chose the community college route. I saved a ton of money. My diploma is from UC Davis, and I still became a physician. I can honestly say that going to community college was one of the best decisions I have made in my life.

Then there are all the kids who live in Buena Vista and don’t even know where they will go for high school; whose parents never went to college, parents who are earning $45,00 a year and working all hours that God gives

As a former PAUSD student who never understood how much work it actually took to remain “competitive” in any of my classes, I have the utmost sympathy for the state of students in this day and age. Thankfully I’m an example of how a solid C student who barely graduated has become a productive and successful member of society.

I’m doing better than many of the students I was worse than despite not having a single college degree.

A sad part of the truth here is that some students live and die by AP classes, for which the homework limits are out the window.

These are fast paced classes and the homework is nessecary for the class to procede quickly enough to cover all the material for the AP tests in a school year. I hate it, it has made me consider killing myself multiple times because of the massive piles of work, but I don’t see a way out. Taking fewer APs isn’t an option for me anymore, and the advanced classes are a specific path which is difficult to slow down, even for individuals.

I concur enthusiastically that Carolyn has articulated so wonderfully and poignantly the crux of the issues. Better than the experts and so many who have tried to analyze and hypothesize what is going on.

Of everything she wrote, the one sentence that stuck with me the most was:

“the real problem is that [the students] simply have too much of it to cope with.”

THAT is the issue. Our poor kids just have too much on their plates and not enough hours in the day to accomplish them (never mind sleep!). I’ve never been one to over schedule but often question my parenting because others around us keep their kids SO busy!

Let’s all do what we can for our own children, and one by one, maybe we can make some small strides forward.

Carolyn, thank you for your honest and sincere thoughts! We should make your article a must-read for Gunn/Paly freshmen.

The majority of the news regarding Palo Alto high schools right now is negative. Complains stir up more notice and response than compliments and praises. I believe that it is necessary to point out what a truly amazing, strong, and supportive district PAUSD is, including the high schools. I am currently a senior at Paly and have gone through all of my education years at PAUSD. While I understand that Paly is not for everyone, it is important to acknowledge that the positives greatly outweigh the very few cons and that most people have an amazing experience. Everywhere at Paly I see smiling faces, from the first day of school to even finals week. I am surrounded by extremely talented teachers and classmates. The author of this student sadly has not experienced what I and many have at Paly. My experience is not rare, it is more common. However, it is the negative experiences that get more attention than the positives. In this article the author stresses how demoralizing class lanes are. But that is a part of education. Every student needs to be placed in a class that is suitable for them. And not all students in middle school are ready for higher lanes. A student with a C in math in sixth grade should not be placed in the same math course in seventh grade as an A in math student, because both of their needs would not be met. Some students need the extra support while others need to be pushed. I am a student who has had friends in higher lanes and lower lanes and I am someone who is grateful for the classes that I have taken. Academics at Paly can be rigorous but they push me to show me how strong I am. Of course I have been overwhelmed at times but I would not change those moments; they are a part of life. I have absolutely loved my PAUSD experience. If you walked on to Paly and interviewed students you would get more praises that complains. You would get to hear about all of the incredible things that students are involved in. All of the students are talented and I feel so lucky to be surrounded by people who both push and support me.
This is one student’s view of Paly and while true to them, it is not true for me and many other students at Paly. For all those reading this who have not gone through Paly themselves, you cannot judge Paly off of one person’s viewpoint.

Reduce the Honors and AP class load limits. Send the kids up the hill to a Junior College who want it and bring back all those wonderful programs like metals and woods the district dumped so they could purchase “communications technology”. Time to bring back things that work the common sense parts of the brain. As for a 4 year school, until the State changes the rules, the competition will continue in this District. If we follow Chinas example, we can only get into a college if we have the best grades. Of course, some still think that rule applies here and that is the only route to success. Puts a lot of pressure on some students without a release mechanism.

FYI – Castilleja has figured out how to let kids work at their own pace/level without being placed in a “lane”

Within every math class a student can chose to
1. master the basics
2. Push the boundaries
3. Reach for the stars (or something like this)

therefore, two students can take the same class and achieve the same grade while working toward a different goals.

The girls love it because they can master the basics of a unit that feels especially challenging and then reach for the stars a few weeks later when she is feeling more confident/more free time/better prepared.

If you want to point fingers, point them at the parents. The pressure and culture does not originate in the school, and the teachers and administrators have no choice but to bow to parent demands, which results in the differentiation Caroline describes. I sympathize greatly with her, and will not raise my child in the area for the reasons she describes. Nonetheless, laying this at the feet of the schools when they are merely a product of emphatic and unrelenting parent demands is a mistake. Nowhere else in the world have I found a culture in which, when asked what they want to become one day, graduating elementary school students list off prestigious colleges they would like to attend rather than professions like “doctor”, “police officer” or “scientist”. These ideas are not coming from their teachers, most of whom were not, themselves, a part of the culture of pressure in which these students are caught up, and who do not ultimately like what they see it doing to their students.

Dear Carolyn,

Thank you for sharing your poignant words. I hope it will spark more students to come forward and share their experiences. While I laud the students with exemplary records who have recently spoken at the school board meetings, they are not the norm. In an ironic way, they contribute more to the community’s potential denial of the very real problems of competition and feelings of inadequacy.

Students of Palo Alto, please continue to speak up and share! It is through communication and connections that we can build a stronger community.

Carolyn, I think you need to step back, and stop asking for handouts. The opportunity is there for the taking, if you want it. Have you seen “The Incredibles”, a movie by Pixar? It has some great points in it. One of the main quotes is “When everyone is special, no one is”.

Straight up, not everyone is going to get straight A’s and go to Stanford. You gotta deal with that fact. But if it’s important to you, work hard, and the chips will fall as they may.

I, personally, had an Asian mom who was on me to do well in school. I did well, went to Stanford, and now I own a good chunk of the Detroit housing market, as well as a lot of high performing small cap pharma stocks ($KOOL, $ATHX, and $SGYP to name a few, and $OIL is making a comeback too). Did I get there by complaining? Heck no. Get your hands dirty, don’t ask for everything to be given to you on a silver platter, and get back to your studying. Have a good rest of the week!

Thank you, Carolyn, for your courageous, honest writing and willingness to contribute your own experience to the public discussion. I can confirm that our two kids (now Paly grads), and many other Paly and Gunn students our family has known in the past 10 years, have had similar experiences to what you describe. The expectations of teachers and coaches–with all the required homework,tests,sports practices and relentless pressure to perform–were (and still are) completely unreasonable and undermining of healthy youth development. The competitive attitudes of parents, peers and college admissions offices also contribute to the toxic mix, no question. We are long overdue for a cultural overhaul.

I hope that what you wrote will help catalyze our community, and especially its leaders, to work for needed changes. I also hope that you can feel good about speaking your truth so eloquently and touching so many people’s hearts in the process. Your voice is an important one. There are a lot of people with you on this. Again, thank you.

A few more thoughts. Thank you to “Watching” above, who wrote:

Now we (the adults) can retune our engagement on the issue to be more effective in addressing the root problem, which is:

PARENTAL ANXIETY ABOUT OUR KIDS SUCCEEDING

This isn’t a system that can keep scaling: our kids can’t continually increase their performance level. It is literally killing some of them, and crushing most of the rest.

I also appreciated the writers who said, “Have the courage to buck the system, even though it’s hard.” Two of our neighbors (Stanford professors, mind you, and parent of HS teens, who also see some of the empty shell overachievers who land at Stanford) encouraged us not to get sucked into the negative PARENT peer pressure – the kind of people who look down their noses and say, “oh, your kid is going to SANTA CRUZ? Are you OK with that?” (Where do we think the kids learn this stuff, anyway??) They can make you think you’re losing your mind, they said. Don’t let them, for the sake of your kids and yourself. Unfortunately, many of the teachers have had to buy into this warped over/ever-achiever mentality or lose their jobs. And so they pile on homework. (My niece in MA got great scores on her APs and is at Columbia but she didn’t lose her mind staying up ‘til all hours doing homework and have a nervous breakdown. What is up with the PAUSD AP HW load that so many have written about here??)

Sadly, I really wonder what the heck else a lot of these parents have going on in their lives, and as I read through more of these posts, I was also reminded of the Palo Alto Developmental Assets Initiative, and wondered what is going on with that. http://www.devassetspaloalto.org/about-the-assets.html Is that all window dressing? How many of our kids can say they have any of these assets in their lives?

Our daughter has a lot of the assets, and still she is struggling, given the prevailing culture and the HW load.

Being part of a faith community is one of our family’s assets, something we hold dear, a prized possession, a place where people are valued for things other than achievement and test scores. But even so, we see very few of our high schoolers each Sunday morning – they’re either too tired to come, have homework to do, or a soccer game or an arts competition or who knows what all else to do. Pretty sad there is no “Sabbath” even when you follow a faith tradition, whether it’s observed on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. It’s hard to “rest” from this frenetic culture of constant activity even if all you’d like to do is play a board game or watch a movie or bake some cookies with your kids. Plain old-fashioned stuff we adults probably all grew up with. There’s always more home work. Or another extracurricular. Or your parents are forever checking their iPhones and not paying attention anyway.

@Robert misses the point: “The pressure and culture does not originate in the school,”

Um. Yes it does. I have two kids who can tell you directly that their teachers pressured, bullied and intimidated them over homework. And they humiliated their friends in class in front of everyone else.

And the Principal did nothing each time.

So you are just simply wrong.

Thought you should know the facts, before you spout more nonsense.

Go Carolyn!

There are loads of comments but I want to add my appreciation for this essay — just about the best thing I have read on this tremendously important topic. She writes, “We are not teenagers. We are lifeless bodies in a system that breeds competition, hatred, and discourages teamwork and genuine learning. We lack sincere passion. We are sick.” Wow — chilling. I have a freshman son at Gunn. The teachers and administrators don’t care about these issues, but voices like this girl’s say so much. Thanks.

“the teachers and administrators have no choice but to bow to parent demands, which results in the differentiation Caroline describes”

Why?

It is time for the administrators to call back their power and to make the changes that the experts say is necessary for the health and well being of their students. Then we can no longer blame the schools (which seems to really be the parent demand).

Thank you for sharing your story. I feel your pain. We moved our family to Santa Cruz a couple of years ago, due to the increasing stress and pressure in Palo Alto.
I miss Palo Alto in many ways. However, the change in my kids is priceless. They are happy, and their grades are better than before.
The Palo Alto School System might be good for some kids, however not all kids will respond well to the high academic demands and pressure of the same system.

Thank you, Carolyn. You’ve captured the essence of the struggle with great resonance. This is not unique to Palo Alto — it’s a syndrome of many high-performing communities. Just because no one at M-A has publicly committed suicide doesn’t mean this same competitiveness and undertone of shame for not being perfect doesn’t exist there as well. Or in Saratoga or Cupertino or Mountain View.

It’s not an easy fix because everyone is complicit in some way. The parents for demanding evidence of “the highest standards”; teachers for confusing homework with higher-order learning; Principals, superintendents and school boards for measuring progress based on test scores and top college admittance; students for buying into the competition. AP Classes are the biggest hoax ever perpetrated — why would anyone want to take college courses in high school? Even the elite Castilleja has eliminated all AP classes.

The problem is that everyone is afraid to take the big risk of pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. That your life won’t really be over if you don’t get into Stanford. No one wants to tell teens that it’s completely normal for them to feel depressed, disassociated and confused at this time in their lives — that every teenager since the dawn of time has had these feelings and should have the luxury and the right to feel what they feel as they make the transition into adulthood. Instead, we are hosting our own version of The Hunger Games where we teach our kids to kill or be killed.

A “B” means GOOD. It means you’ve done well and you’ve learned what you need to know. So go enjoy a movie, go to the beach, go lie down in your yard and see how many constellations you can identify. And tell your parents, teachers and Boards of Education to get their own lives and let you have yours back.

Carolyn when you do get to college, you’re going to notice:

“holy macaroni! I am so much better prepared than these other students.
I received an amazing education, literally ranked in the best in the country.
Showing up every day to learn from amazing teachers and alongside many many talented and hard-working students is something unique and special I’ll NEVER get to experience again.”

This isn’t meant to disagree with what you have said, just a different perspective which may help.

It’s been interesting to work with young people recently graduated from what the author calls the new norm. I commonly see academic high-achievers struggling professionally. Many share common traits and are problem employees largely due to unbalanced competitive behavior. Bumping into executive conversation or stalking executive meeting areas to get noticed, eavesdropping, premature expectations of promotion vs consistent focus on output. They are less likely to risk an original idea and more likely to seek credit for work they did not personally perform. Fear of failure / exposure for what they have not yet mastered stifles the opportunity for professional development and people skills. When reviewed or measured they often demonstrate physical anxiety or become unreasonably defensive or worse, they morph in an attempt to mimic who they perceive is most valued and lose themselves under the pressure and desperation to perform. I am in my 40’s and would like to see this author follow up and publish her graduating classmates’ views on this environment citing how it did or did not prepare them for professional life and what they learned about performance anxiety as young adults entering the workforce.

There is a school called Genius Kids on San Antonio Road and rumor has it that they are opening branch at Edgewood Plaza. Some of the neighborhood parents think this is a good thing.
Aside from the obnoxious name of the school, they start pushing the children at age 2. Sounds very unhealthy, no matter their fancy public statements.
At the very least they should change their self-aggrandizing name. How can a child respond without embarrassment when someone asks the name of their school?

I went to Cubberley High School in the Sixties and everything that kids are experiencing with stress, growing up, homework, AP classes, now was the same then if not worse. Nothing new under the Sun being a kid growing up in Palo Alto. In addition we had the draft with the Vietnam War where I lost three good classmates now buried at Alta Mesa, just across from Gunn High School.

Same as it ever was…..

Carolyn, thank you! What a brave and beautifully written article that sheds light on the student experience in our community. How fortunate we are to have teens like you in our schools- ready and able to speak up. Thank you.

While I read this there is a flashing “Yes on A” sign on the site.

Let me say why I will vote no on Measure A.

1. There are very few means available to parents to send a message about the overall management of the district that do not involve a risk of retaliation. Measure A is a secret ballot, so it is possible to send a message without that fear. Like the surprise fact that Ken Dauber came in first in the election, Measure A is likely to fail because parents will take this opportunity to send a secret ballot negative message about the overall running of the district.

2. There is no downside. This is a tax increase occurring a year ahead of its actual need. The reason they are running the campaign now is so that if it fails they have a margin to do it again next year before the money is actually needed. So let them run it again next year, having received the message that they need to do more to protect our children from dying of suicide. Hopefully having received that message, and chastened by it, they will do a better job and re-run the campaign next time. The cost will be the cost of the campaign which is negligible compared to the human toll the suicides are taking on the entire community.

3. It will work. If the district loses Measure A and has to re-run the tax next year or face dire fiscal consequences then everyone will understand how serious it is to get this right. The sense of urgency around suicide that is lacking (as Carolyn says, the time for action is right now, yet we are still being treated to proposals for Singaporean junkets, unnecessary district staff to ramp up yet more competition for “publishing in scientific journals — as if anyone in high school needs to do that — and endless achievement slidedecks. The day after a child dies no less. That was indecent and it won’t change without consequences.

Believe me losing Measure A will be wake up call. And the best part is that it is a free wake up call, since they can just re-run the campaign next year, when it actually matters, and when they have shown that they are listening to Carolyn and making the changes that are long overdue.

4. It is the one thing that hasn’t been tried. We have seen over the past 5 years multiple political campaigns, organizations, parent groups, PTAC efforts, policy proposals, doctor letters, organized efforts by Stanford faculty, a mass exodus of parents leaving the district, seven or eight federal investigations into bullying and harassment, and a massive negative media situation. Our board has proved remarkably impervious to political pressure. They don’t care about parent views.

You know what they do care about? Money. Green stuff. Benjamins. They care about that. So let’s take that, in this easy risk free envelope from the Secretary of State, and check the NO box. Then write in sharpee at the bottom the names of the children who have died.

#RightNow

Carolyn mentions the stress of comparing one’s self with a dense population of wealthy, driven students. Why not fully integrate PAUSD with East Palo Alto, to even out the mix? Wouldn’t that help everyone?

First off, I’d like to congratulate Carolyn for stirring up this week’s PA Online firestorm in this very well written piece.

As a Paly grad of 2012, I’d like to think I have a slightly different grasp and understanding of the intricacies of Paly and Paly’s culture (both the outstanding benefits of attending our fine Palo Alto Senior High School as well as the numerous problems associated therein) than do the above parents and alums from the 80s. I can’t speak for Gunn and Gunn’s culture, but I can’t believe it’s drastically different than Paly’s.

Some of the points Carolyn raises are undoubtedly true. Yes, of the two 8th grade math classes, one is considered “normal” and the other “dumb.” Yes, many of your peers may have different values and spend their time unlike yourself: interning, volunteering, studying, what have you.

Carolyn paints this picture that this problem is universal: that everyone at Paly has too much homework, that everyone’s sleep deprived and grossly insecure about their grades. If you’re stressed and feel your workload is absolutely insurmountable (which, in my four years at Paly, rarely happened), feel free to talk to your teachers. In the few times I’ve had this problem, teachers were, at the very least, accommodating. This is high school for god’s sake! Homework shouldn’t be taking until 1 am every night, and from my recollection, teachers emphasize this pretty much every time they hand out assignments. (College on the other hand…now THAT’S where you start pulling all-nighters…) And if the problem persists, maybe you aren’t in the right section/lane. The whole point of having a system of lanes is to challenge those who want to be challenged while accommodating those who struggle. If you’re apprehensive of switching lanes (which I’ve done), maybe you should figure out why….is it really the teacher’s fault or is it because you feel “ashamed?” At a certain point, teachers can’t pander to literally every individual student’s problems. It’s a simple fact of life: someone won’t be there to spoon-feed information to you once you leave the PA bubble.

Isn’t what makes Palo Alto so great is the uniqueness of the residents? Each of us excel in some capacity, whether or not it’s academia. The idea that there needs to be some continual comparison between your peers, that “he got an A, I didn’t, therefore I’m stupid” or that “she’s in the higher math lane, that makes me less intelligent than she is” is outrageous. Who cares whether or not one of your classmates has an internship? Who cares whether or not your friend started studying for the SAT immediately after exiting the womb? How does that affect YOU? If some kid wants to take 87 AP classes and have 0 time for anything but schoolwork, who are you to decide what’s good for them? The fact that more and more kids are basing their self-worth on the actions of others is simply wrong. What happened to being happy for what you’ve accomplished?

Carolyn and many parents also seem to be of the mind that competitiveness is wrong, which I vehemently disagree with. Excessive competitiveness, sure, no doubt. But competitiveness in any capacity? How does that seem at all feasible? In the real world, you’ll be competing against people literally every day: to get that last bagel at the store, to get a promotion…the examples are endless. We seem to be attempting to remove all challenges and obstacles for students. Let’s have them work together on everything! Let’s make some classes pass fail! Let’s reduce homework! Let’s get rid of all AP classes! Let’s shove every kid into the same level of classes, regardless if it’s the right for them! Let’s all give everyone an A for effort, because hey, at least they tried! At a certain point, it just gets ridiculous.

It’s a fact of life that, at some point, people at Paly are going to have to deal with: in this world, there will be people better and worse than you at LITERALLY EVERYTHING. It’s up to you whether or not to make a fuss about it or not. I’m of the opinion that complaining at every challenge or shortcoming you come across is a waste of time and honestly, weak. Everyone’s different and excels at different things. It’s time to give up this ideal of a utopic Palo Alto.

Carolyn,
Your essay is courageous and I admire your strength to discuss a topic that affects all teens in the bay area.
I’m a therapist and I specialize in working with teens and I hear these same concerns daily, especially from the juniors.
The constant panic, anxiety, and depression is a product of your generation and the nature of the system failing.
The anxiety about getting into a college even after being top of your class at a private or public school has brought numerous teens to tears and panic attacks in my office. The stress level your peers are going through is unbearable at times.

I value and appreciate your courage to put these concerns in an essay and share with the community.

More students, administrative staff, counselors, and the district need to recognize the larger issues.

Thank you for getting the message out there and for being a role model for change!

Sincerely,

Amy Mayo
MFT
San Mateo / Bay Area

It’s not about competition in kids wanting to succeed and being held back or even normal healthy amounts of pushing. It’s about parents introducing material sometimes years before it is introduced in the classroom which creates artificially advanced classes. The un-prepped kids with normal to high levels of intelligence will be learning the material for the first time, leaving them in the slow lane to be ridiculed by parents and kids who have done the prepping. Your choice? Most end up joining the preppers. Subjecting their children to summer academic learning, and second school. Second school refers to the academic learning they have directly after school at “enrichment” centers, these classes often run from 3-6, every day. Kids are getting pushed to exhaustion and to the loss of critical thinking skills and creativity.

Silicon Valley schools are definitely getting their orders from the parents. That’s not to say that they won’t implement the norm on to students who do not want it. There are probably some teachers who also buy into the idea of prepping and pushing.

There is nothing magical or special about the Palo Alto teachers, though I am sure some fit the description like any other school district. The results stem from the parents. Our entire educational system is parent reliant. That means that kids who go to school in lower social economic areas and do not receive the support at home usually do poorly in entrance exams and international tests (that speaks to the previous poster who said America is falling behind educationally, which I disagree with based on the statistical evidence). We are failing at educating kids in poverty. The more poverty we import to the U.S. the further our scores slide, yet middle class and affluent are doing just as well and in some cases better than other countries. If we cheated like China and only counted the high performing schools, international test results would show that (note that not all children are educated in China). If you take all the teachers in Palo Alto and placed them in a disadvantaged area the scores in those schools would not change. I have seen this experiment play out at my old school in which a failing school became a high scoring school because of students and parents, yet the same teachers and leadership remained.

When is it enough of the prepping? It seems that some posters here are happy with the status quo and that we should continue at this frenetic pace ad nauseam.

Carolyn’s article has been a great opening to a conversation that many of us in the valley want to have. Further she gives us the student perceptive that confirms the suspicions and worries that we have about our own children. I care about my children’s mental health.

Paly Alum ’12

At a public policy level, your suggestions about competition will yield a certain level of “winners” who successfully survived the mill you accepted. And you can celebrate the winner getting that bagle. For public school, I think that’s a very narrow way to look at things.

The real life about competition thing is used often as an excuse for not improving practices. By your standard, we should maybe even create some obstacles. When you (as a kid) play, dream, think, and interact socially, and have ups and downs away from academics, that is real life.

So, it matters how much homework you have and what your environment is at school to allow you to develop in other ways. It’s a responsibility to improve everything, and that standard is higher for public school.

@unsure. I understand your concern but please remember that they can do it over next year so it really is a cost-free way to send a message. This is what democracy looks like. Taxpayer revolts are the stuff of the American experience — what was the Tea Party (the original one, not the right-wing version), the Shay’s Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, and so on ? They were taxpayer revolts. This is a hallowed American tradition. Don’t pay increased taxes to an unresponsive government. This is Apple Pie.

Also, remember Measure D. Measure D changed the zoning practices of City Council. They got the message. It made a difference and elected a different City Council. Send a message #rightnow.

Do you know how lucky you are to be going to school in Palo Alto? There are parents who go to great lengths so their children attend school in your district. Things like work several jobs so they can live in a place they can’t afford. SAT classes and extracurricular activities are a privilege. There are many children out there who cannot do these things because their family cannot afford it. They have to work afterschool or watch their younger siblings, or help their elderly grandparents, etc. What a waste of spot in your school district. You should’ve transferred out.

Carolyn makes valid points. Almost every child across the country feels some of the stress associated with meeting the requirements the school,their parents, their community, and their peers place on them in addition to the normal teenage angst. I hear Carolyn saying that Palo Alto has magnified that stress to the breaking point. The specific event that drives any student to suicide is often less important than the fact that the cumulative stress makes any spike in that stress more likely to reach the critical level. In other words, we have raised the stress baseline so high that there is no room for error.

The source of this stress comes from all of us. We want our children to do well in life and we have confused academic success with life success. (I think it is an unintended consequence of raw capitalism, but that’s a different discussion.) We have one of the best school systems in the country and we just assume that every student is emotionally capable enough and mature enough to excel in that environment. Many adults would have difficulty in this competitive of an environment. These are kids, and asking them to compete like adults (especially as a proxy for their parents) is a recipe for disaster, and we start in elementary school. Until our attitude about the role of school in the development of a child changes, the problem won’t go away. The way to develop successful adults is not to make our children act like little adults working 60 hours a week in a high pressure and competitive environment with extremely high stakes riding on it to get them “used to the real world” ; it is to give them a childhood. It saddens me that Carolyn said it so eloquently and so many of us missed her point. I have seen the enemy, and it is us.

I want to hug you and tell you, face to face, that you are amazing! Excellent writing, full of purpose and connection. Well said!

Slow down,

As I suggested to Ken Dauber, introduce better metrics to reflect what Carolyn is talking about. That should include a way to measure if our school system is based on the “who gets the last bagle” policy.

One problem I see is the focus on future “outcomes.” If we really don’t care what college kids go to, make it so that TODAY is good for each of them.

Im not suggesting to throw out standards, but to not have double standards where the kids have the raw end of the deal.

Very interesting paper. I thought this issue was only seen in the minorities. We should not blame the schools or teachers for all our problems. We do beginning our learning at home. We as parents have to realize what our kids capabilities are and not put pressure on them just because our neighbors kids seem to be smarter. We as parents need to be in our kids lives to monitor their feelings and actions to catch a behavior that might raise a red flag.

Wow. I just came across this article through Facebook, I live in an affluent suburb of Detroit, Grosse Pointe, where this article could have easily been written from a student at our high school. This isn’t a problem just unique to Palo Alto – it’s seems common in most affluent school communities. In fact, it isn’t just high school, I have a 7th grader who has four honors classes and is up until well past 11PM every night doing homework. It is exactly as Carolyn states – it’s the sheer volume of work that seems to be the root problem. My 9th grader has already missed many days of school due to anxiety over not being “ready” enough for a test to get an A. B’s are not an option for her. And I can assure you this is not pressure from me or her dad – it’s intrinsic to the culture at her school, classmates, and counselors preaching college-readiness before these kids even step foot into high school. I have shared this article with my three daughters and hope they will pass along to their friends. The fact that it is written by a fellow high school student will make the topic much more relevant to this age group. Thank you Carolyn for bravely exposing what so many middle and high school students are reluctant to discuss.

This is Not an educator problem. This is a parent problem. Lots of kids take the “dumb” (her words) classes and are perfectly fine emotionally, physically, and mentally. They live long, fruitful, and rewarding lives. They have careers they love. Carolyn didn’t have to take AP anything. Either Carolyn or her parents pressured her to take those classes. Let’s put the blame where it belongs, on her parents. Carolyn, get mental health help now.

Behold one of the wonderful teachers that our school board cannot wait to give another raise ^^^^ of your tax dollars. Vote NO on A.

This New York Times article by Po Bronson, a NYT best seller list author who spoke at Paly awhile ago, helps explain why different students navigate through school differently:

“Why Can Some Kids Handle Pressure While Others Fall Apart?”

“Critics argue that all this test-taking is churning out sleep-deprived, overworked, miserable children. But some children actually do better under competitive, stressful circumstances…our response to competitive pressure is derived from a complex set of factors — how we were raised, our skills and experience, the hormones that we marinated in as fetuses. There is also a genetic component…Stress turns out to be far more complicated than we’ve assumed, and far more under our control than we imagine.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/magazine/why-can-some-kids-handle-pressure-while-others-fall-apart.html?_r=0

Come back when you’ve checked your privilege.

As a Ph.D. parent of two children who went to Palo Alto high schools, I can say that this article gives a pretty accurate description of what the school environment here is like. I wonder why we have weighted academic success so heavily in defining “success”? Although my children both went to “top 20” U.S. colleges, I can honestly say that now that they are in their mid and late 20’s, I delight more in seeing the type of people they have become: how they treat others, how they care that the time they spend at work is doing something meaningful to make the world a better place, how they are able to stand on their own two feet, their emotional resilience, their acceptance of diversity, their advocacy for people who have been trampled upon, their empathy for friends in trouble, how they treat me as their mom! Looking back in the rear view mirror, these are the much more important attributes than how many AP courses they took in high school. I think we should look at models like Ohlone and ask ourselves what education in Palo Alto should really mean. Palo Alto should be at least as focused on supporting children to become great world citizens and not just brainiacs.

Believe me, this is NOT an issue that is effecting the Palo Alto community exclusively. It’s a nationwide problem. I teach  in a Chicago suburban high school and have 3 teenage children of my own. These kids are being pushed and stressed beyond belief, notb to mention, not getting enough sleep. The amount of anxiety and depression amongst these kids is through the roof. We’ve had two suicides in our district within the past 3 weeks.We need to take a stand against overloading these kids, and let them enjoy BEING kids.

Very well written. I appreciate that you are raising these concerns

To discuss the competition point. Competition for children is healthy. They need some competition in their lives and they need to learn how to win and even more importantly how to lose.

Saying that, their whole lives must not be fixed on competition from the start.

When they start elementary school the competition starts early. Even the charts for losing baby teeth, the winners are the ones who lose the most teeth. The ridiculous thing is that they will all lose their baby teeth at some stage, but the charts which are done for math are in fact a competition. The teachers and parents may not see the competition but it is there. My own daughter lost her first tooth in 2nd grade while at school and happily told the teacher expecting some praise. Instead she was told they don’t record losing teeth in 2nd grade, that’s just something done in kindergarten and 1st grade. She came home very sad that day and cried to me about how unfair it was because she had never once had her name on the tooth fairy chart. I then had the opportunity to explain about winners and losers and that she would have the opportunity to have her name written on another chart some other time. It was a learning moment and good for her, but the system unwittingly had made her feel a loser for two school years and nobody had noticed. Did it harm her ultimately, no of course not, but it was indicative of the way schools challenge kids right from the start.

Moving on to high school, of course not everyone is going to get a place on the football team, become class president or even become the student rep on the school board. Some would say that becoming student rep in PAUSD is a winning position (how on earth is that honor chosen anyway?). I feel sure that someone else must have said, “it’s not fair, I wanted that and Carolyn got it”.

Not trying to belittle Carolyn’s piece, which I think is excellent, but we do need to look at our school system for getting the challenge into perspective. Education should not be a race. Education should not have a prize of attending a top school. Education should not be competing against the person sitting beside you in class. Education should be learning and achieving all that is necessary to prepare a student for the next stage in life. Education should be helping your classmates when necessary and being helped by other classmates if you are having a problem. Education should be a team effort between the teachers and the members of the class with the parents, administrators and other support staff as coaches and cheerleaders as well as referees if there is a problem. Education should be instilling a joy of learning in every student. The challenges should be there, but they should be a by product of education, not the prime goal.

Thank you Carolyn for your thoughtful and real portrayal of teen expectations in today’s society. I am a school counselor from Mills High School of the San Mateo Union High School District where we constantly battle the issues you so articulately illustrate. The reality from my vantage point, however, is that this is not an issue isolated to your school or in the Palo Alto district. Our society and the pressure it puts on teens to be admitted to a top name schools drives the insanity. I solute your efforts and will share your words with our Challenge Success team, as well as our, Student’s United Against Stress club. We recently held a parent workshop titled, “Success and Balance in the Modern Day” with help from the San Mateo County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services and the Chinese Health Initiative. The outside support our counseling staff, and in turn students/community, is receiving is at least a tourniquet and bandage to the gaping wound. While your time in high school may not be remembered exactly the way you wish it had, know you have left your mark with this poignant plea for help.

This sounds like most schools in America. I think your community needs to look at the emotional fragility here – why are Palo Alto youth reacting so intensely to the pressures imposed on most young Americans?

When I went to Paly (years back) there weren’t these issues. Sure, there were all the teenage issues, but not the hyper-competitiveness. The parents have lost it. They’re trying to build super-kids. Not well rounded, but by the measures that only engineers can understand (quantitative metrics).

The Silicon Valley was also different. Gone are the days of the nerd looking to discover, to build something (and perhaps make a good living). The numbers and the motivations are insane. It’s all about money. For what? To buy a larger TV, a faster car, a home in Palo Alto…

At Paly my number one concern was helping and hanging with friends, then girls, then beer, and then school.

I turned out fine. Made it into CalPoly. I’m well rounded, don’t drink, and am a vegetarian who gives a large portion of my (very good) income to Doctors w/o Borders.

Parents: Raise well rounded children who do what they love and they will be happy people.

Despite or maybe because of your challenges, you are an articulate writer and a contributing member of the community. If this stress is all about being smart and successful, you’re there. If the stress is about getting into some college, you’ll do well no matter where you go. Your future is bright.

@Teacher says: “This is Not an educator problem. This is a parent problem. “

Nonsense! As a parent in the system right now, I can tell you that it IS a teacher problem and that EVERY parent in my local group has had CONSTANT problems with teachers overloading kids with junk work. It’s a discussion at every party and get-together.

In other communities (for example Pleasanton across the bay) there have been outright parent revolts, with hundreds of parents hitting the school district and eventually forcing a homework policy (which the teachers fought tooth and nail).

Teachers and administrators want a “rigorous” school and abuse their roles to slam kids with stress. That is why we have so many suicides. It really is that simple.

I heartily applaud Carolyn for her thoughtful and thorough piece. It pained my heart to read this. Thank you so much Carolyn.

I am coming to the conclusion that other than Ken Dauber there is not one person on the Board or in the administration that is really listening to the students and attempting to make changes that would positively impact their social/emotional well-being.

Inspite of all the evidence supporting the elimination of Zero Period students are signing up for next year as I write. What part of attending a challenging academic course at the crack of dawn is not healthy for our students do our Board Members, Supe,
Parents, teachers and the entire commnuity not understand? It has been rumored that the Paly student who recently took his life was enrolled Zero Period (ZP). I am wondering how many of the recent Gunn students who took their lives were enrolled in this Zero Period madness. I think that this should be a public record and that we, as the tax-payers, should we able to access this information. The School Board and Administrator (MAX…..listen up as this means YOU) are hiding this information from the public like the previous Board and Skelly allegedly attempted to hide facts from the OCR. It’s time to get transparent. Ken, transparency was part of your platform so please keep putting the facts out there and speaking the truth as you know it. We need your skills now more than ever. The current board is a disgrace and I am sick of attempts by certain board members to silence the truth.

Here’s my truth: I am voting NO ON A and for the following reason: Zero Dollars for Zero Period and Zero Respect for our students from PAUSD. Money talks and in this case my money says, “BYE BYE.” I will encourage all of my nighbors and friends to VOTE NO ON A until we start getting some action to change things that are so critically in need of change. This is about saving the lives of our students. We have lost enough stundents. If the changes that have been suggested by so many, including highlty respected pediatricians and the the students themselves, are ignored it is on Max and the Board to live with this.

As Carolyn put it, the time for change is NOW! Let’s not have one more loss of life or one more student that falls through the cracks. We must pull together for all of these precious students that we love.

I’m amazed at the number of comments, presumably from parents, that are agreeing things need to change. CHANGE THEM! 12-year-old kids don’t sign up (and pay!) for multiple enrichment activities – their parents do. High school students (under 18?) cannot sign up for 5 AP classes without their parents’ agreement. If you don’t want them to be stressed, don’t allow them to do this.

This situation will not change because it’s in nobody’s best interest to change, except the student’s. Colleges like having a larger pool of talented students, high schools like having their kids getting into those top schools, communities like having high performing schools to keep their property values up, and parents don’t want their kids falling behind everyone else. The only ones who get hurt are the kids.

I have two girls who went to Los Gatos High School and saw a lot of the same issues. Now that they are both finished with college what I have learned is that it’s not worth putting that much stress on yourself to get into the best possible college. It’s much more important to find the college that fits you and to do that you shouldn’t stress yourself trying to be someone that you are not. College is college and you will find that kids who went to Stanford had a similar experience to kids who went to any other college. Once the pounding stress of doing what it takes to get into that top tier college is over, you are in college, and what will really matter is whether you are happy and successful at that college.

The values of the schools reflect the values of our society, which is increasingly dominated by the high tech corporations. Palo Alto is ground zero for this culture. These corporations have no mercy for preserving the mental health of the individual or the environment – all they care about is increasing productivity and profits. Bravo for these students for speaking up and asking for help. In helping them, we may just help ourselves survive this tsunami.

@My Thoughts – It is irrelevant whether I want kids to compete, because they will. In school, in work, in life, in relationships. So better to equip them to deal with it and not ignore it.

EmmaB repeats a common fallacy, that rough play and strong competition are the norm among animals. If you watch documentaries about elephant seals, birds, monkeys/gorillas, and more, you will see that it is the males who are violently competing and fighting, not the females. The females may make themselves attractive to the males, or are tending to their young.
Is it typical of humans to engage in boxing, wrestling, football and other violent competition? No, these are male activities, so called sports.
Of course there are rare exceptions, viewed as oddities, but the fallacy is generalizing male behavior to the entire species.

Slow down

It is very relevant how you look at competition because you are pitting these kids against each other.

This is not the place or time in their young lives to do that. I’t not.

We need new metrics to measure how we are doing by the students.

The Sin of Generation X was believing in the truth of meritocracy rather than the crypto-aristocratic scam that it is and inflicting that belief on their children, at the expense of their sanity.

My generation ascribed their achievement-induced anxiety disorders to their own personal weaknesses. Ms. Walworth is refusing to participate in that additional self-abuse. That is viewed by some as generational narcissism and self-absorption, but I view it as people finally standing up to this nonsense. Good for her.

The mentality in the area is one of the big reasons we moved away 9 years ago and unfortunately for the teens the struggles they are experiencing are directly related to the adults in their lives- even as adults with advance degree careers (physician and engineer) it was difficult to feel like we were succeeding there. It was always about who made more, had more, lived “better”. If it was stressful for us, I cannot imagine this as a teenager and I hope the school board takes this brave young lady’s words and suggestions to heart.

“My Thoughts” is right. The better teachers assign reasonable amounts of homework that has a fairly evident connection to the class being taught. The less impressive teachers assign silly projects, or group projects in which 1 or 2 students actually do the work and the other group members coast. If a student does not learn something as a result of doing the homework that would not have been learned anyway, the assignment was a waste of time from a student’s point of view.

Re cheating: It is real. And that’s a bad thing not only for the high schoolers but for their future selves. Those who cheat in high school will cheat in college as well — where, frankly, I hope they get caught.

This is a great article. Thank you for telling the truth in public. So long as the parents and the school are willing, stress can be significantly reduced, eg the school district should restrict number of AP classes that can be taken, inside or outside the school, at each grade. No matter how we define success, losing life and health is a number one failure.

Is college matriculation the source of overall tension? Here is the actual Palo Alto High School college matriculation link below.

http://www.paly.net/sites/default/files/College%20Matriculation_summary_052014.pdf

With 13 heading off to Stanford and another 18 to Berkeley, there would be an enormous amount of pressure here to land among them. It looks like an issue that reaches far beyond the schools. Parents.

Jean,

As a parent who has, along with most of my friends and some of our teachers, tried to advocate for a more whole-child approach, I would like to suggest that you offer support for the majority who have been trying to fix our district for many years, not level blame indiscriminately. It doesn’t help.

We have really faced a stone wall, and often retaliation, when we have tried to change things. I’ve been retaliated against just for trying to have those conversations. The district administration, despite a change at the helm, is still deeply resistant to even having conversations — I guess they wouldn’t want to leave a paper trail — about change and improvements.

We brought up the idea of using independent study rules to create a program like the Homestudies Program in San Jose, in which they have an office that helps families individualize the educational program for each child. It might even mean a combination of school-based and home-based learning. What did the district do? Refuse to even let our child have just math for independent study, and removed independent study from the catalog at Gunn since last year. What I heard was that they were afraid of too many families wanting such an option and then where would we be? (More popular than ever with more happy students and no need to build new facilities to accommodate the new enrollment?)

I would love to see our district start a community of innovation with families, in which families are willing to take on the “risk” of innovating, meaning, the district can separate out their test scores from everyone else’s, and treat it as a separate program. Give us more freedom. Let us establish non-graded options, or student-led project-based option. (If a child is really interested in writing a book, provide curriculum support so the child learns and satisfies requirements for English and history, or whatever fits, as part of writing the book. The output should also be less important than the process, but the support should be there for the child to see the project through.) Give children the chance to satisfy basic courses they aren’t interested in by taking classes from a menu of blended options that allow them to take them more efficiently, so they can spend more time on auto shop or an honors biology course they might not otherwise take because of the added work — and have time for projects related to it. Let kids access other learning opportunities. Diversify learning opportunities so kids can find their gifts, get a supported, well-rounded education. High school is the best time for kids to start a business and fail, because mom and dad are paying the rent.

This does not have to be expensive, or difficult. Most of all, it does not have to be feared. The educational administrative structure in this district should move to a more open-source model. It’s impossible to innovate in a system in which a bunch of people making more than the governor of the whole state have an incentive to dig in and maintain a hierarchical model frozen in time. They try to push potential innovators out the door rather than letting them fix the system.

What do you mean we haven’t seen this develop? I realize it’s harder for people to roll up their sleeves and throw their lot in with “advocates” (such a dirty word in this district) than to pile on about ugly parent stereotypes, but some of us actual parents could use the help.

@ MP observer – MA is 41% white, 43% Hispanic, 4% Asian. Gunn is 40% white, 42% Asian 9% Hispanic. Which is actually more diverse?

Dear fellow residents,

Please be careful about what you say. Our young folks read this space, and your words affect them.

Let’s model our best civil behavior. Let’s speak with thoughtfulness and consideration for all of the people involved–our teachers and administrators, parents who care and do their best, students who work hard to grow and learn every day.

I see a lot of generalizations here. I look at the district and see people–thousands of them–all different in what they contribute, need and want. We have many talented teachers and some bad ones. We have many wonderful parents and we also have some who put undue pressure on their children. They have many reasons for doing so–Right or wrong. There are some students who cheat. I think most do not.

We can never know what goes on in the heads and hearts of others and we should never presume that we do. Please do us all a favor and try to frame your comments in a constructive way. Ask thoughtful questions that aren’t meant to attack but to help us all understand the problems better. Try to identify solutions and move them forward in a positive way. Let’s teach our kids by example how to participate productively in our democratic structure. They are listening and learning from our behavior.

Cramming for tests does not instill a love of learning in kids. Burying your kids in homework to improve their chances of going to a good college is torture. I would never force my child to compete in such a soul destroying activity. The educational system in the U.S. has been poisonous for quite some time. Demand change!

@ Slow Down
I think it’s pretty clear from my post I was referring to economic diversity.

@Suzanne – if I could point to one thing in your college matriculation list that really stresses parents out, it is the 25% drop in the number of students accepted into the UC system between 2011 and 2013. More kids struggling for fewer spots (competition). Ugh.

The short-sightedness of this article and it’s shocking displacement of blame, or better yet, individual responsibility, are another reason why I am happily leaving the teaching profession after eight years. There is absolutely no discussion in this young woman’s article -NOR- in the comments made by the adults in this forum about the way in which American families and communities have utterly abandoned any commitment to our schools. Because education is NOT a priority in most American households or communities in such a way that parents are willing to set limits on their children’s personal and extracurricular activities and make quality educational time and effort a priority for their households, my colleagues and I continue to find that our students are ill prepared and not being held accountable for performing to the higher standards that the best of the industrialized countries use in educating their youth. And really? Are we STILL living under the absurd myth that schools and teachers have a responsibility to “entertain” students? What about the responsibility of students to take advantage of the time and money investments being made in them so that they can develop the skills that any decently educated person and adult member of our communities should have? What about the responsibility of parents to BE PARENTS and make sure that their child’s behavior and (lack of?) academic preparation doesn’t negatively affect the classroom? What about communities and states (i.e., California) who bankrupt schools and yet have money for any number of ridiculous pet projects and business-friendly endeavors?

Dear Palo Alto,

As a product of Gunn and the PAUSD system (JLS, Nixon), I feel obligated to write yet another post.

I am 25, out of college (UCSD) and working at Google, an ideal dream for any Palo Alto “product”.

Increasingly, I am disheartened to see what has become of Gunn. The rash of suicide began immediately after my departure has yet to be addressed.

To me, the problem is much larger than homework. I took 6 APs classes, had a GPA of 4.0+, participated in extracurriculars and jumped through each hoop required to become an admirable college applicant. There was plenty of homework and stress, but to me, and many I knew, that was not the largest problem. I fell victim of depression and the classic existential crises that plague teenagers. However, there is truly no support system at Gunn. As a student you have the choice of Parents (no teenager talks to them), Counselor (stigma associated), Teacher (rare to talk about anything outside of school with). This deficit leaves no guidance for these youth, especially those looking for help.

I recently went to a workshop on grief with Sobonfu Some. I asked her about why these deaths were happening and how to address it. The answer is what we all know, but choose to ignore. There is a lack of soul in Palo Alto. We spend too much time distracting ourselves and our children. We do not connect genuinely with ourselves or our youth. On top of this thought, we do not deal with grief, and lack the support system to allow our children proper spaces and vessels to air their grief and other emotions. At its core, we lack a true overarching community, one that bridges education and family life. She also said “Nobody has ever committed suicide without asking for help.”– a key point.

For me, the nature of the pressure wasn’t the most difficult challenge, but the culture and environment. The lack of self-discovery, the lack of community and most of all, the lack of a meaningful path make growing up in Palo Alto an innately hollow experience.

When you look around Silicon Valley, you see obsession with wealth, speed and disruption. We support and drive consumption without any intention, creating vehicles of distraction to support markets that do not serve us.

Palo Alto used to be the forefront of novel, progressive thinking. In this last internet boom, Silicon Valley has become more akin to Beverly Hills than Santa Cruz. If we examine the correlation between youth suicide and IPOs, they correlate well. I ask Palo Alto for a critical examination of how these shifts affect our culture.

For a place that values disruption so much, why do we, as Palo Altans, have such a hard time disrupting our own educational system to solve these issues? Where have these institutions and systems failed us?

Enough about problems. Here are my solutions:

1) Mandatory Nature Education and Retreat.

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”
John Muir

If students were allowed to spend time in nature and see how it can serve as a higher power if needed. The need of students, as society as a whole, to reconnect with the earth is central to existential crisis.

2) Palo Alto Alumni Mentorship Network (PAMN)

A network of Alumni and recent grads, willing to receive mentorship as well as be mentors to produce a support network. I have spoke with many grads in my age range (21-30) and all have been supportive and excited about this idea. This structure allows for people of all ages to support and in turn be supported. A system like this makes isolation much more difficult.

3) Places to Express themselves, Teenage Centric

We need teen groups and other sacred space, where kids can go to speak honestly, openly and without fear of being judged. I know groups presently do this (Ecstatic Dance Palo Alto), but they are not catered to teens. The host of Ecstatic Dance Palo Alto is open to starting teen groups.

I welcome feedback and support. I am willing to take lead on these initiatives and will be reaching out to the school board about them as well.

Feel free to email: andrewdosan@gmail.com

May we all heal together.

Cheers,
Andrew

Many of these comments are great. The problem is we have heard it all before. I feel I could go back and retrieve any number of editorials from this paper published since Stephen Wertheimer died in 2002 and just change the names and dates and repost them here. How many editorials has the Weekly published cajoling, asking, praising, begging, pleading, harranguing, demanding, asking again for change in our schools? How much change has there really been since 2002? Stressed Out Students? SHARE? PADAC? PSN? P-8?

12 dead children later, what results have we got to show?

We had late start, but it turns out that was a Trojan Horse for early start.

We almost had TA at Gunn, but that was a hoax too.

We got Schoology, another fake-out. The teachers filed a grievance so they don’t have to post homework. The day after Cameron died. The. Day. After. Cameron. Died. Just in case you don’t get who is boss, that was a boss move.

People, wake up. Stop paying the system to flatten your children. We are rich. We are privileged. The system will not go without our volunteer hours. The system will not go without our children doing their homework.

Seen Norma Rae? STRIKE!!!

Dads: We need a taxpayer strike. Vote NO ON A.

Moms: We need a volunteer labor strike. You want to file a grievance? Fine. Make your own Staff Appreciation Breakfast.

Teens: One Day Homework Strike. Don’t do the work. Support Carolyn’s call to action, take action, and declare a homework holiday. All you Gunn kids on the warpath about keeping zero period, why not protest meaningfully instead and organize a homework strike? The reason you want zero period is to do your homework, that’s obvious. How about declaring that you’re not going to do this backbreaking and worthless pile of busywork anymore!

Community: Vote NO on Measure A. Send a message to save our students.

wer

Cathy Kirkman,
When/Where is the next coffee meeting for mypausd.org?

s

Carolyn, you say that “you can’t help but slip into the system of competitive insanity related to college admissions to achieve social normalcy.”

Hope this helps:

Only 16% of Paly seniors attend the 15 or 20 competitive colleges most often in the news.

So “normalcy” is the 84% of Paly classmates who will attend the 130 other colleges mentioned in Suzanne’s link, colleges that require neither 4.0s nor near perfect SAT scores.

While I do agree with Carolyn that there is often too much homework in high-achieving schools, I’m not sure what to make of her feelings about “dumb” classes versus “smart” classes. High schoolers will always find some way to compare themselves. When I was in high school I had low self-esteem from being a nerd. I was not one of the beautiful, rah-rah cheerleaders. So, instead, in our high schools the students who aren’t nerds have low self-esteem. Big deal. That’s life. Kids will make comparisons and high school is often a time of feeling bad about oneself for not being in the “in” crowd. I’m happy that being in the “in” crowd is about achievement and not popularity in Silicon Valley schools. I’m happy that my son went off to college prepared. I’m THANKFUL that he was balanced enough and felt supported enough to not be obsessive about his GPA or his SAT scores. He took the SAT once and the ACT once. Luckily, his ACT scores were high enough for some schools in the top 40 (thank-you high school). When he was looking at colleges his self-esteem did come into play – he was afraid that he wasn’t good enough for the top schools because he didn’t measure up to his high school peers. That bothered me a bit and I tried to tell him it wasn’t so, but in the end, I think it was better that he was properly prepared for college than that he felt entitled to go to a top 20 school just because he was top of the heap at a less competitive high school. At least I didn’t have to worry about college being too hard for him. That can bring its own set of problems when the student is far away from the support of his parents. He’s in the workforce now and doing fabulously well both socially and financially, and loves his job because he followed his passion. While I think a lot of that is due to his personality, I firmly believe that his high school set him on the path to success and I’m glad I didn’t have to send him to an expensive private school like my out-of-state sister had to do to get the same level of education.

@lynbrookmom

So you were made fun of for being a nerd, so now you feel it is ok to bully the kids you perceive as”dumb”. I don’t really get that. By the way being in a higher level class doesn’t automatically make you smarter than your peers. In essence this is the greater problem, a misunderstanding of intelligence in general. This is what is leading to depression and feelings of inadequacy. The assumptions that if you are not on the “right track” you are dumb; everyone races and preps to keep up, creating an unnatural environment. You say you were bullied because you were not beautiful and a nerd. How many young girls killed themselves or made themselves sick to live up to the beauty ideal? Yet you argue to trade one reason to devalue kids for another.

It is possible to have a school where all types of students are valued. The high school I graduated from didn’t have a bullied group. Our prom king was an over weight misfit (a friend of mine). It was ok to be smart, it was also ok not to be smart. No one was obsessed over which classes another was in. It was a large blue collar/ white collar middle class school. People treated each other decently. No one cared what anyone wore either.

What I am getting at is that it is possible to be free of this level of toxic competition.

I read most of the article (it was too long to read it all, sorry). What you said about pressure and assignments and 8 hour long days at school continued with work at home, etc. sounds exactly like the school I went through in Romania, years ago. And, by the way, we had classes 6 days a week, including Saturdays, with only Sundays free. On Sundays us “smart kids” were mandated to participate in advanced 4 hour long math classes. So… Almost no free time. Yet, nobody was suicidal, and from my class, for example, 98% were admitted to college right after graduating high school.
So, I’m confused. This is how school SHOULD be. If you can’t take the pressure… maybe this school is not for you.

I’ve actually read many of these comments posted here. A minority of commenters describe their own very challenging experiences for themselves or their kids, and then proceed to say that they managed the challenge successfully, so anyone who can’t is just SOL. In other words, if I can do it (or my kids can do it), so should everyone else.
These folks fail to realize that not everyone has the same positive experience as them. Why can’t folks acknowledge that for many kids, it’s actually an awful experience. And that there’s nothing “wrong” with the kids who are having an awful experience.
For those who are basically saying “maybe this school isn’t for you”, it’s a PUBLIC school. It’s for everybody.

I don’t think the corporations are behind this at all. yes, to some degree it is tiger parents. But, the bigger problem is the universities admission process. Elite colleges are proud that their number of acceptances shrink every year! For example, probably most of the students who apply to Stanford could do well there. But Stanford only has a few spaces and cannot possibly accept all the students who apply and are capable of doing well there.

So, the universities keep raising the bar on the requirements: not just perfect grades, but also perfect test scores, and that’s just so the universities will check you out. They also want leadership in an activity and also devotion to some cause and proof of many hours of volunteering.

They want perfect adults. That’s the problem. Some commenters say, just don’t aspire to those universities. Well, increasingly, it is not just the Ivies/privates but many of the UC’s as well as some of the Cal State programs are extremely difficult to get into.

Telling students, especially very capable ones, don’t even try doesn’t
make sense either.

But we have to do our best to reduce stress as much as possible. Many excellent comments made here.

Carolyn you have done an excellent job of opening up the dialog. Thank you!

Brave writing.

I’m an expat living in Barron Park for the last 3 years with kids at PAUSD.

TL;DR: Parents are to blame, and only parents can change this. And it’s much easier than you’d think. Just let go of the race, and focus on allowing your kids to fail. The Race doesn’t correlate with Success. Internalize this, and let your kids find their own paths.

Some other random thoughts:

1. Wealthy American parents are …. idiots. Even if they came in from other countries to settle here. Bay area parents are scared, conforming, pushy, competitive, and so stressed out about failure, that failure is not an option. NYC parents are worse. As a result, their kids will not be allowed to fail, and will be miserable when they will.

2. American culture does not favor “different”, only winners. I’m not against winning, but that logic is a tunnel vision that restricts kids from actually achieving success. Of course Zuck was a Harvard drop-out, and most parents are smart to understand how that miracle can happen. But will deprive their own kids from the option to FAIL GRACEFULLY AND MOVE ON.

3. I took my kid out of school for a vacation during school day and I got the “oh I’d love to do that too” crap from other parents. No, you don’t want to do that too. You think I’m too easy on my kids. You’d prefer to conform and compare notes with other kids’ parents to see who’s winning the race. You’re just too paralyzed from fear of failure.

4. Here’s the kicker. Most americans who graduate this elimination contest lack resourcefulness and true ingenuity. I see these top-of-their-ivy kids all the time. They are great circus acts that know how to jump through burning hoops. But you won’t change the world by following previous generation’s rules, and without being allowed to fail.

Now – if you’re a parent and find it in your heart to forgive my non-passive-aggressive aggressiveness, try to think about your child’s success in a different way than you do today. It’s not about the race, so stop competing.

Zero period info: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/03/13/editorial-while-preaching-the-value-of-sleep-high-schools-quietly-offer-early-classes

mauricio,

It may be true that people are more conformist now, and I frankly would love to see more strong advocates and activist parents. However, I don’t see that as why things aren’t changing.

For that, we have to look to decisionmakers and powerholders. The people making the decisions in the district office, and now influencing McGee, are people who are making a huge amount of money for what they do (some make more than the governor of the state), and have learned over time how to hunker down, discourage parents who try to change things, and hang on until things blow over.

And you also have to look at the way power flows in the system. There are no mechanisms to create balance when things go awry within the school district as there are at other levels of government. You can’t go above their heads and complain to any other body, except when there is rank discrimination (and guess what?!), and you can’t use any mechanism like referendum.

That could be changed, by the board changing its own rules. But that will take families pushing for something as arcane-seeming as board rules. If they could get that, though, things could change pretty fast if there is ever a major community push as now.

To those posting on this thread from other communities, whether nearby or from afar, just a friendly fyi that this community is different to some degree even from nearby high-achieving ones, IMO.
We are not “just” bemoaning the “normal” high demands placed on students at high-achieving high schools; it is a bit more complex – yes, the heightened demand for top 20 universities as a result of US News & World Report is one thing; yes, the desire of educated communities to press their students for “more” education, STEM, whatever, is another. “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” by Amy Chua is yet another influence. Here, we are seeing education at the high school level often turned into a game complete with strategies and tactics, sometimes cheating an unethical behavior, and it is wearing on those of us genuinely interested in learning and appropriate development of -even- “gifted” youth.
We do appreciate those teachers with strong, advanced knowledge in particular subjects who do a great job teaching, but have some issues with others who operate in a needlessly stressful manner, which does NOT benefit students. An example would be announcing how many As will be given (in a large, competitive class).
Furthermore, you are likely unaware that in the early 2000s there were losses of students from one of our high schools, then in more recent years, from the other one, then most recently from the first, again. Some communities have not experienced this although they are geographically close.

My Two Cents:

It seems like you’re indulging in a barely disguised “blame the victim” game, the victims being all our children who are second rate to some bizarre academic achievement tontine–last man standing type of schooling, where the ante is always upped, and the kids suffer. As for the, if you don’t like it, move somewhere else meme– public education isn’t supposed to work that way.

welcome to the realization Palo Alto/Cupertino/Fremont are all in the international arena of competition… for academics and onto the rest of the premature rat race. Rent the japanese movie version Shall We Dance; the main character moves through his life like a zombie… much like our kids on their academic zombie treadmill. purchasing a home for school-district education in los altos schools was a considered decision to provide normalcy for my kids. my elementary school strategy is to ignore test scores, focus on subject fluency/proficiency, and assume the role of home educator to edify before placement tests are upon us. i accept my children may attend an obscure college, but college graduates with confidence, ambition, likeability, bravado is more the profile of corporate U.S. executives than check-box resume. hugs and support to all managing the torrent and its impact on loved ones.

Thank you so much Carolyn! You deserve SO much credit for speaking out from the perspective of a student so beautifully and passionately. I hope and pray change will come. Palo Alto is not the only “sick” school district. Los Altos, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, San Jose….this is a Silicon Valley and beyond epidemic. I am so very sorry you have suffered so much, and that your teen years have been spent in a chokehold of performance and over-achievement. I too had a miserable time in high school, but for different reasons. I vowed not to raise kids around here….yet here I am in Los Altos with 2 high school age kids. While my kids have felt the pressure, I must say, they are balanced, and happy because we don’t push them to aim for admission to Ivy League schools, or to achieve some “greatness” that is not what God designed for them. Everyone is unique, special and important. One does not need to attend Stanford or found a major corporation for this to remain true. Follow your heart and pursue your gifts and what makes you happy regardless of what others say or how much you will get paid. You are better off living in Missouri in an apartment working in a job you love, with people who love and support you than in some elite position where you will have no life, be worked to death and sacrifice everything for some thankless piece of soft or hardware that will be obsolete in a week. You are a strong young woman and incredibly gifted at writing and advocating for those who might be unable to express how they are feeling. I hope you will contemplate these gifts as you consider your future and your life’s work! Whatever you do, don’t keep working to please others, but do what YOU feel led to do and let go of the rest. Thanks so much for being bold and making your voice heard!

Anyone know of a reason we could not extend the JLS Connections program into high school? It is engaging, team-oriented, and supportive of all students. Even laning could be accommodated in a COnnections-style education.

Connections is not some foo-foo, touchy-feely “alternative” education, it is a very hands-on, collaborative, project-centered approach that educates and builds real-world skills like working in teams and public speaking. Kids even have some homework!

Why is the Connections model not being adopted across all of PAUSD? Why must Connections be reduced to only English and Social Studies in 7th and 8th grade? Why is there no Connections option in high school?

PAUSD administrators – get a clue! The Connections model is awesome!

Lauran,

Your hot headed rant (I am reluctant to call it “impassioned”) leads me to the assumption that you did not carefully read Carolyn’s piece. And because you immediately got your hackles up because someone dare mention the very idea that gee, golly, there might indeed be an issue with some teachers who routinely go rogue and abandon homework assignment norms, I have to question the integrity of your response.

When you state that “my colleagues and I continue to find that our students are ill prepared and not being held accountable for performing to the higher standards that the best of the industrialized countries use in educating their youth,” I have to utter a sarcastic “Ha!” Just who ARE you, and your so-called “colleagues?” and, what are the ‘best of the industrialized countries’ you are referring to?

Also, just where is it mentioned in Carolyn’s piece about the need for teachers to “entertain” students? Are the words “motivate,” “inspire,” “engage” all metaphors for “entertain” in your lexicon?

Another thing – $$ invested in our kids public school education comes from… us. That means that ideally, we, as involved and concerned parents (yes, Lauran believe or not there ARE some) get to have some input into school district policy regarding things like classroom size and, oh, I don’t know, homework and tests that really MATTER, instead of insane nonsensical busy work. And also things like our kids mental and emotional well being while attending school. Gee, I’m really sorry if you find that just too much to have to “deal with.”

Your claim that you are “happily leaving the teaching profession”at least brings some hope to this discussion. The issues Carolyn brought up are varied and systemic, and this brave young woman’s insightful piece can hopefully galvanize all of us toward better solutions for our schools and for our kids who have to navigate them. The system, if not entirely broken, is breaking down before our very eye, and there is plenty of blame to go around. But when blaming the victim and painting them with such a broad brush enters the discussion, MY hackles go up. Enjoy your new career.

Would you like to be taught how to count from 1 to 10 – if you already know how to count to 100? Would you like to be told to please run slower so your other classmates don’t feel left out?
So let me give you the other side of the story. I have a child going to 2nd grade. This FUSD school has no system of “advanced” classes at the elementary level. I cry every day that my child goes to school. What is to be taught that day at school – she already knows. Months and months of sitting bored and idle in school was beginning to have a negative psychological effect on my child. You may look upon the “advanced” classes with disdain – but believe me – children like to be challenged and it is impossible to challenge them when the focus is on “No Child Left Behind” – on the lowest achievers.
I don’t yet know much about middle and high school, but I too tend to dislike the homework that my daughter brings home from school but for a different reason. Homework makes mt child write 1-10 (when she can count to 100) and eats up the little productive time I can spend with my kid in the evening. I recently found Khan Academy and their Learning Storm program. I signed my 2nd grade kid up as a 3rd grader. Within weeks, she’d mastered all the 3rd grade math concepts – including fractions and decimals. She was finally working at a level she she was capable of and was so thrilled doing it. I could see the pride within her as she understood the problems and attacked them one by one. And she loved collecting those points. Would you like Khan academy to take an egalitarian approach and make sure that 2nd graders cannot take 3rd grade math?
Yours is a perspective from one side of the aisle – the children that can’t yet count to 10. You (and the public school system) deliberately ignores those who can count to 100.

Dear Carolyn,

I grew up in the Bay Area, graduated from Homestead HS in Cupertino in 2000, I’m 32 years old. 10 years removed from college and almost 15 years removed from high school makes me old enough to have a little bit of perspective but young enough to still remember my high school days. Please allow me to share with you some of what I’ve learned over these years, and hopefully, my stories will help alleviate some of the stress you and your fellow students feel today.

While college admission has certainly gotten more competitive and pressure on high school students has never been greater, the stress and academic dynamics weren’t all that different 15 years ago. Just as you do today, we all joined way too many clubs just to pat our college applications, our parents spent thousands to send us to SAT prep class, (the test was out of 1600 back then) and we both feel sorry for (and secretly worried) about those kids whom their parents forced them to go to Kumon for after school tutoring. In my senior year my school began to offer AP Statistics, and practically all the kids in AP Calc. and AP Physics also took AP Stats, just because we all knew that college factors in the % of AP class taken vs. total offered as a data point in their admission criteria.

Daily life also wasn’t all that different, no we didn’t have smartphones, Facebook or Snapchat, but I gossiped about SAT scores with my friends during lunch break, rushed to after school FBLA meetings and band practices, and tried to slot in a sport or two during the critical sophomore / junior years. All the while trying to work through all the typical teenager male anger issues and navigate the drama that IS high school. I often felt back in those days that I was barely afloat, because it seemed that everyone else around me seemed to have a better handle on everything than I did.

In my case that feeling was probably warranted. I was not a great student in High School and a horrible test taker, particularly on standardized test where adherent to some nonsensical strategy actually matters – like the SAT. I could give you a bunch of reasons or excuses but what it came down to was that I possessed far less discipline than most of my peers back in those days. As a result, most of my friends had better grades (I had a 3.4 GPA in HS), and WAY better SAT scores (I only scored an 1190) than I do. So when the college rejection letters (unsurprisingly) came, one after another, I remembered feeling utterly disgusted with myself, and the hopelessness I felt must’ve been pretty traumatizing back then because as I am writing this, almost 15 years later, the memory still feels a little uncomfortable. I still remembered that summer in 2000, when my two best friends were about to head off to UCLA and Cal Poly SLO respectively, thinking that this was the beginning of when our life begin to diverge – them towards a bright future and success, and me, left behind.

I temped that summer, started class at De Anza, and was giving some serious thoughts to career options that didn’t require a college degree. Over the next couple of years I would do a couple of road trips to visit my friends at “real” colleges, always with a mixture of envy and shame.

So at this point you might ask, how am I faring today? Did I at least landed on my feet? Was I living on the margins, struggling to get by in this comically expensive valley? Am I living a life of regrets and missed opportunity?

Not. One. Bit.

I transferred to UC Berkeley after two years at De Anza and graduated with a degree in Political Science. After college I got a job with a major tech company, my career has allowed me to live in major cities on both coast, and gave me the opportunity to travel all around the world. I earned my MBA from a top 10 program in 2013 and recently moved back to the Bay Area to take a position at a mid-size (about 1k people) company as a director and the head of a business strategy group. Needless to say, even by Silicon Valley’s perverse standards, I’m doing pretty well financially, and I had a great time getting to where I am today.

I hope at this point I have at least succeeded in persuading you that success in life and personal fulfillment has almost nothing to do with your high school GPA or your SAT scores. If financial, academic, or professional success is what you seek, be reassured that there are many paths to attaining those success and where you go to college really isn’t a big factor in your likelihood of achieving distinction. In fact, even if you’ve earned a degree from the most prestigious university in the country, when you get out and look for your first job that degree essentially only amounts to a certificate certifying to the people that you’re in fact, not stupid. In my career so far I have meet many insanely successful people and what I’ve found is that while they came from all walks of life, they all share certain traits, and those are: Passionate attitude / interest, critical thinking, creativity and a desire to learn.

If that is not enough of a reassurance, then let me just say that based on your superb writing, you’ll go far in life in whatever field you want to pursuit, so stop worrying and stressing out, walk away from the rat race, and rediscover your passion and your interest.

S

Homestead HS (‘00) | B.A. Berkeley (’04), | MBA Duke (’13)

We should give serious considerations to the idea of radically curtailing the number of foreign students we admit to our colleges. We are torturing American children like this obviously find young woman and her peers because they must compete for a smaller pool of places in college. One third of Columbia is foreign students. Did you see the WSJ article this week? One third of NYU, ditto for the Calif. school systems. These international students are mostly from China and mostly not staying here. It is an enormous mistake that must be corrected. 10% is my vote for the spots we should make available to non-US students.

Ben,

Each child is different and I can’t say what makes one bored or frustrated at school, but I don’t think its only because of the variety of learning levels. But you bring up a good point about mission, and what is a public school’s mission. I know a family with gifted children who experienced two types of schools – their older was tested and placed 3 grades higher in a school with a gifted program. The gifted students had some contact with their grade level for certain things but were largely served in an alternative program in groups with mixed ages. When placing their second kid, they decided to put both in regular school, no pull out programs and it’s been just fine. The kids are advanced but their school happens to have a big emphasis on play time, and that seems to make more of a difference in terms of their satisfaction during the day. A relief they found is that in the gifted program there was a tendency for parents to continually compare and rank their own and others’ kids. As bright as they were, it seemed to still be important to do more. We seem to have that going on here.

More play time would help everyone.

Glad to see that posters have caught on to Lauran’s comments. I reminded her that the competitive schools she fears and admires around the world don’t have no town by town Boards of Education (or teacher unions) and are state managed. There is no such thing as choice in Finland or debates about the 3rd grade Science textbook.

This means that besides quality of teachers what also matters is quality of management and organization.

But to Lauran’s comment about entertainment – it does make a difference when subjects and teaching are made fun for students. You have to make a real effort to make learning boring, may as well spend that effort to making it fun. So yes for entertainment.

Many (most) teachers make school fun, but if we have even one hateful attitude like Lauran’s it’s bad news for students, and management should be preventing that.

Orinda,

“The kids call it that because at some level they feel safe and emotionally protected by their home town.”

There have been times when that could have been said here, and even now people are coming together to do something but it’s really hard. Take a look at some of our fights about the invasion of office space, and where the priorities are. I appreciate your posting here and to get a view from the outside. We are similar in many ways, but we need all the help we can turn this situation around.

Orinda,
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I’m not sure it’s fair to compare, though. This area has, as long as I have lived here (many decades) had a transient feel relative to the East Bay, that is nothing new. You can put down roots here, but it’s hard work. That’s not just Palo Alto, if anything, it was worse in Sunnyvale and San Jose. Oakland, despite its reputation to outsiders, is the most welcoming, neighborly, diverse, place, it really feels like home. The biggest small town you will ever live in. The climate is better than anything in the Bay Area, including Orinda, and including Palo Alto. We have friends who just moved there and still work here, after living in Palo Alto for decades, for a child’s schooling.

Palo Alto used to have an advantage of small town feel, too, and convenience in getting around, good retail/small town shops, but that’s been changing. In the last few years, the traffic and noise – especially around Gunn because of Arastradero – have really ratcheted up. The “feel” has gotten so much more hectic. There is the feeling that someone else’s interests always take precedence above the interests of kids and families anymore, at least on this side of town, and there hasn’t been any development of community assets to offset the more negative development.

To those who moved out to RWC, Orinda or elsewhere, good to hear it worked for you, but you are now no longer in the schools, so when you criticize Palo Alto schools, it’s different.

Calling Palo Alto names, and how much better your system is especially unnecessary. I hope the Editor will use portion remove for such posts.

The humanity of this essay is something to make us all proud. Yes we have problems, and we also have amazing compassionate and good students who reflect a community that cares. Anyone posting should provide as much respect to the expression and call to action that was made here.

I haven’t yet thanked Carolyn. Thank you Carolyn. I watched the Board meeting where we first got to hear your voice. The adults were giggling after their closed session, and the meeting was about to be “normal” until you spoke, distraught about your classmate, and with enormous wisdom said you couldn’t see this as business as usual or something like that.

I have to think that much of your courage and kindness also comes from our schools. There is much much good here, and the things that need to be fixed really just have to be fixed. Hold us to it.

Thank you Carolyn for sharing your thoughts and feelings. If your story does not take the school board, McGee, principals, teachers into action to reduce the stress of students, I don’t know what would…

How can they help? By realizing how DIFFICULT it is to be a teenager in this environment, and by having empathy towards students by not piling tons of homework, by not grading them so harshly, by allowing them to be late on homework now and then because a soccer match is more important, because helping a friend is more important, because getting some fresh air with friends is more important, because life happens…

Orinda– don’t worry that’s just standard PA behavior, resisting criticism. That’s how we got to the terrible point we are at.

@my reasons I think reality rounded up. Reality is Baysian as it turns out. The district does not acknowledge this reality. It’s too late to save those already lost but it’s not too late to eliminate zero period and save lives goijg forward.

Orinda

“Outside the bubble” called Palo Alto “RANCID”

Following your bubble comment. and the suits and stiffness of the Gunn team.

Just saying that type of stuff is unnecessary.

My friends who live in Lamorinda characterize the culture there as a lot more classic American high school-ish, as opposed to the somewhat quirky, intellectual Palo Alto. So if we are to speak in sweeping generalities, like Orinda has, the moms there are a lot more likely to fall into the “fun gal” ex-sorority girl mold, and the dads former jocks working in law or finance. The kids are a lot more into the cheerleader-football player thing than in Palo Alto, and there’s a lot more peer pressure over things like fashion and popularity.

So yeah, I think that kind of environment could be better–for some people. If you’re white, upper middle class, not at all nerdy and like the sort of thing described above, then you’d probably be really happy there. But plenty of people would feel more at home in Palo Alto.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/Unusual-amount-of-cheating-suspected-at-Stanford-6165103.php
news flash: San Francisco Chronicle reports unusual amount of cheating suspected at Stanford
Gee, how inspiring to local Palo Alto students.

Thank you, Carolyn. This is the best writing on the subject that I have ever read. I remember standing in my child’s schoolyard one afternoon about 17 years ago. I was standing in a group with other parents and we chatted while waiting for school dismissal. I listened in disbelief as some of the parents of fifth and sixth graders talked about how if your child isn’t on the “high math track” by at least fourth grade they will be “behind” the curve for a college competitive math track in middle school and high school! My daughter was in second or third grade at the time. I stood there dumbstruck, but also became worried. I would say that is about when I became conscious of the new rules of the game. It seemed absurd to me but we eventually got sucked into the frenzy just like so may do!

I attended high school at one of the Peninsula’s best private schools in the ’70’s. There were no AP’s then! It was normal to take Algebra 1 as a freshman, geometry in grade 10, Algebra 2 in grade 11 and if you were REALLY gifted Calculus in senior year! And guess what? Lot’s of students from my high school went to fabulous colleges and on to wonderful careers in medicine, law, business, creative arts etc.

I have raised two wonderful children. Neither of them made it onto the “highest track” in most subjects, but one is a graduate of a UC and is launched into her career, making a good living and supporting herself. My youngest is going to graduate from a wonderful public university next year. Both kids thrived in college and were/are academically capable for college level work.

I have been heard saying many times lately that I am really glad that I don’t have any more kids coming up through high school. Two was enough and I am grateful that we survived the insanity of it all!

Most of the posters who have shared concern that this is happening in their communities, avoided the specific comparisons which you started with this whole thing about your town better than here.

Are you surprised that you would find a mirror here?

I’ll just say that your rationale is unnecessary but Paly 89 may be interested to see how even among adults the competition banter gets ugly.

We can improve schools by being respectful of kids individually and collectively as was stated by the PAMF docs.

@Reason: I mentioned those things not to condescend, but rather to encourage. Sounds like I did a poor job in my haste to end what was already a long post.

By referring to my own imperfect record at Paly, I was trying to communicate that it IS possible to go on to the kind of esteemed institution that many students (or their parents) strive to reach *without* getting straight A’s, taking every single AP class, etc. It’s easy for students striving for perfection to view any miss, no matter how small, as a terrible failure, a matter of life and death. I was trying to convey that excellence does not equal *perfection*, and that setting a standard of perfection is a recipe for unnecessary mental and emotional pain.

I write from my own experience and don’t pretend to know what it was or is like for kids with different challenges. If you reread, my only comment about students who find that some subjects come with more difficulty was that there is *no shame* in taking B-lane or “regular” classes when they best serve the student’s needs. Carolyn wrote about that shame and the toll it took on her self-confidence in math. That needs to change.

@Gunn parent: I am not a victim blamer — unless you seriously consider parents victims? That’s quite a stretch.

Paly 89

The kind of change I think some are talking about is that nobody wants to keep hearing about the non-traditional ways to eventually get to Ivy. Why does a school system have to depend entirely on where you go after high school or where you go after after after after after high school.

The point is what is TODAY like for kids. What are we doing TODAY to make the life of kids sane TODAY.

I do not care where all us wrinkled types ended up at.

As a parent, I love to see the views of the kids going through our education system. I personally feel – a lot of this has to do with parents aspirations and definition of what success is for their kids. We all want the best for our kids – and by being competitive and (supposedly) helping them in being competitive – we think we are doing the parental duty. But Carolyn’s piece is an amazing perspective of the world from the kids eyes. I think it will be hard for me to change my own value system – but knowing the extent of pain and stress definitely makes me more open to thinking differently. Thank you Carolyn.

PS: I am not sure to what extent this is school’s fault. I really think it starts at home – and the solution is for to understand/appreciate the stress their kids are going through and to think at what cost they want to push their kids to get into the best colleges..

@communication, funny you want to dismiss any comparison of an outside town of take any input from a former PA resident and student. Irony is strong within the BUBBLE.

As hard as it might be to set your PA ego aside, what with all the tech gods and “disruption”, the solution may actually come from outside of PA.

It is not the homework or rigor, it is the lack of instruction with rigor and homework all upon the tutors, parents and kids shoulders.
Other schools are able to give instruction. flipped classes are a joke- the teachers send home websites and you tube videos for them to look at on their own and then test them on an exam that is not at all in line with their own book or their video clips they sent out. Then they brag about the kids who had money for tutors or took extra classes while the pretty smart kid that just thought following directions and working hard would get them an A. It is not the teachers… it is the level of instruction and poorly crafted evaluations meant to stump kids that add an insurmountable pile of stress onto self motivated, bright, optimistic students. It is not the parents. sorry.

When there were two full classrooms full of chemH kids at Paly to retake a test they did not pass and the teacher said it was all on the them… and the admin was told and did nothing! Going to Paly is like a really cruel keep away game.

Is there any where I can go to help in some way? I feel very deeply about this as a past Gunn mom. At the time probably i was not as mature to recognize some of these signs. But if I were to revisit history it would be different. Sometimes it is not just the school system and an overall repurcussion of the broader social surroundings as well especially for new families. And yes while everyone might not be affected the some that do are a telling statement on this otherwise blessed community.

It absolutely IS the homework. We PA parents have been fighting Gunn like crazy for years to get the teachers to BACK OFF on the 5 hours of stupid junk homework per night.

Then the teachers come here post comments about how bad the parents are. Yawn.

Lies, lies, and more lies. That’s PAUSD in a nutshell.

@Gunn alumni mom

Yes, there is something you can do to help.

Help us parents get the entire PAUSD school board fired. Fired on the spot. Help us go in and start firing the problem teachers and administrators who are perpetrating this abuse.

That’s the solution. We don’t need nice words and helpless gestures. We need people to wake up and get mad about the abuse of our kids. We need legal action, since years of complaints by parents have been utterly ignored.

“outsider” a resident of Palo Alto High School said
“It is not the homework or rigor, it is the lack of instruction with rigor and homework all upon the tutors, parents and kids shoulders. “

It’s so true.
I might add the inconsistent volume and stream of leaning each year.

Palo Alto middle schools teach just regular middle school curriculum. It is fine. And our standardized test shows just a little over average. So much for “excellent school district” with so much money spent.

However, for example, in high school, some chem H teacher dumps AP level materials and volume and tests the students. AP is a college level by definition. There is no high school chemistry to bridge.

Some students who already know this fact prepare for the class in summer or even earlier. Poor clueless students are so stressed out without preparation. When we mention about the problem, teachers say “Well, other students are doing fine with my instruction.” They think of what’s going on.

Our schools are not rigor or anything. Just a very few top students win science fairs and other competitions.
I think parents in other surrounding school districts are laughing us. They probably have better, less stressful, intensive, but well structured instruction in school.
Our schools pretend their rigor, cover up the lack of instruction with a lot of homework.

I hope SB doesn’t spend so much time for eliminating zero period first and making other people’s schedules for the next year pending and forget about the more important issue in our schools.

Of course, “They don’t think of what’s going on” if you notice in my previous post.

Have you seen demographics in PA Weekly? It is hard to deny that some cultural groups are more demanding of their children. All the who is who children are in private schools and the rest… Who donates most money to schools? Needs to be looked into.

Caswell has always supported more rigor and she is an Ivy League graduate. Her daughter attends Castilleja. Klausner attended Stanford or some Ivy with daughter at Stanford now. Townsend’s daughter digs rigor and is at Princeton. Tom is Stanford grad. We need a Board without elite school grads because they will represent the majority. Klausner and Tom are gone and I can’t wait till Caswell is finished. This us a public school district so it should not be targeting the upper end, but the middle. Thank goodness for Dauber.

Not sure how voting against Measure A helps anyone. If anything it creates a crisis in a District that will distract from getting anything productive done. Measure A does pay for smaller class sizes. It does pay to have more counselors and psychologists. Vote for our community.

Are you kidding? We have a PAUSD board member that sends her kid to private school instead of PAUSD. How messed up is that????

Dear Carolyn,

It is perhaps the most damning evidence of all, against our system of “education” in this country (for Palo Alto is far from alone), that a student as brilliantly intelligent and rich with potential as yourself should be so legitimately and so profoundly at odds with the ideals promoted by her school.

The insights you have expressed with such wisdom and maturity are shared by some of the greatest minds & most flourishing cultures — just one example is Harvard professor Tony Wagner, who has made a documentary film called The Finland Phenomenon, sounding the same alarms you have, trying to wake us up to the astounding damage done by our schools, and showing us the beautiful possibilities we are foregoing, as exemplified by the Finnish school system.

Since our schools cannot help students, perhaps our hope lies in students like you helping our schools. I believe you already have.

Stay strong.

@involved parent, why do you think Measure A is going to pay for counselors and therapists? I don’t see any extra counselors and therapists in the budget anywhere. But anyway it’s ok because it’s still a year early. We can use Measure A to send a message. If you want a parcel tax then do something about zero period and spend the money on counselors.

What would help is to get the number of students from PAUSD that actually apply to Harvard.

You will probably have a REALLY small amount. And compare Paly and Gunn since the “success’ rates have been higher for Gunn.

These kids may be tired but they are not stupid. If only you would hear kids talking about the college application process, it is a very small minority which would consider applying to Harvard.

But please, go ahead and accuse parents without any data to back it up.

On the other hand we do have data that speaks to the failures in management of the schools. We have a union that actually resists a homework policy. And schools are predicated on a fear based laning system.

The problem is that nobody actually listens to the community, they listen to the Dinosaurs who think nothing needs to change.

@Another dad

School rigor and homework volume is a contributing factor, but not the cause of the stress and mental health issue.

The issue is an education system and an insular culture that encourage rampant, inward competition and discourage big picture thinking and honest perspective. Students in high achieving schools get stressed out from a variety of sources – yes, the HW load and the unspoken expectation of excellence is one, but so are peer pressure, parental pressure (for some); the college ranking business certainly didn’t help either.

We should rightly encourage our kids to aim high and strive for excellence. But as we encourage our kids to excel, we should also make every effort to remind them that it is ok to fail, and to teach a little perspective to them to recognize this rat race for what it is – a self-imposed, ultimately inconsequential competition that may provide a venue for some to reach their full potential, but a mental disaster for many others if followed blindly.

After giving some thoughts today about what Carolyn wrote, I feel that ultimately I need write again to stress just how artificial and utterly unnecessary this whole stress inducing system of education is.

First, let’s get real, the stress that Carolyn and her peer at schools like Paly, Gunn, and other schools in the area filled with offspring of some of our most economically privileged members of society is entirely self-inflicted. In the grand scheme of things if your kid is stressing out about having to go to SJSU instead of Stanford, then I suggest you should take your kid for a drive to some of our less privileged neighborhoods, or go check out the homeless encampment right here in San Jose. There, not even a ½ hour drive away, we can find kids that is stressing about what to have for dinner or if he’ll go hungry tonight. Or maybe they should tune into NPR, and listen to stories about immigrant families trapped in a vicious cycle of generational poverty, where one must choose between staying in school, or staying home to provide childcare to her younger siblings.

I felt that Carolyn’s comment, along with this now infamous article that was recently written by another Paly alum in U. Michigan’s student newspaper, as symptom a growing problem – the increasingly insular, self-absorbed elite culture and education system that churns out academically brilliant kids that are increasingly out of touch with the rest of society.

Now, I certainly don’t blame a 17 year old for not knowing any better, but I feel that as educators and parents raising kids in some of the most economically privileged enclave in the world it is their responsibility to not only teach the academic subjects, but also help the kids understand the world they’re about to enter and to help them recognize their privileged place in our society at large.

My experience is that a lot of these stress – from relentless peer pressure, academic competition, and generally trying to “keep up” tends to melt away when you gain some perspective. After all, once you realized how big the world is and how privileged your upbringing has been within those campus walls, all that scrambling for an extra 50 points on your SAT scores, or acing that next AP Calc. test probably begin to seem pretty silly and ridiculous. Why compete for the last .01 of 1% of merit, when in the grand scheme of things, everyone have already won?

Exactly, @15 years ago, except you don’t have to look that far, just next door. If you care to dig up my post buried back on March 26, 2:48 pm, you’ll see I describe a much different atmosphere at MA, where the fabulous college counselng office prioritizes identifying kids who’ll be the first generation to attend college, not the third generation to attend Harvard. And where roughly a third of the students qualify for free lunch, while attending school side by side with a large population of the very affluent. MA has lots of problems, to be sure, but intolerable academic pressure is not one of them. And the privileged kids still get into their elite colleges, and sometimes to our great pleasure the disadvantaged kids do too.
It’s all about socioeconomic demographics. Given that, I’m not sure what the solution is for PA schools, but it’s interesting to see where discriminatory practices from long ago have led us.

With regard to the proximity of the train tracks being a possible issue- The Bridge Rail Foundation was organized to reduce suicides on the Golden Gate. The Foundation’s site says it has speakers that it will send out to communities. This resource might be a way to avoid “reinventing the wheel”.
Also, Palo Alto (and the surrounding communities) lack any significant adolescent mental health resources: no inpatient unit, no intensive outpatient program, or even a free ongoing support group for depressed teens. Why are we looking to just the education and transportation systems to fix a health issue?

Carolyn, I am sorry that your family and/or friend structure has fostered an environment that is insufficiently suppotive of you. But what are you proposing, really? That the district create a single math class, to the benefit of the 25th-50th percentile of students whose feelings are easily bruised by facing reality? Would you rather they call the class, “ Math for students who have enormous potential?” Tracking is critically important for the education of the top 25% and bottom 25% of students. Perhaps the district would be better off with three levels of classes: Top 25%, middle 50%, and remedial 25%. It would be a tremendous disservice to set up the bottom 25% to fail (just to propo up the feelings of overly-sensitive bottom 50 percentile students). It would be an even bigger tragedy to rob the world of the next Einstein, just to fluff up the feelings of overly-sensitive teenagers with a false sense of accomplishment. Not everybody is cut out for MIT. Not everybody should go to a 4-year liberal arts college. You seem like a passionate and articulate girl. If during your senior year, you get accepted to college and decide to attend, you can try your luck there. BUt if you aren’t accepted to college, there are plenty of other excellent options for students. Don’t worry about fitting into the traditional mold.

James,

“It would be an even bigger tragedy to rob the world of the next Einstein”

Are you serious?

You actually think that we produce Einsteins with this system?

Even Finland strives to improve.

Finland’s Schools Are Overhauling The Way They Do Things. Here’s How

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/28/finland-education-overhaul_n_6958786.html

I too am a product of the PAUSD and graduated from PALY. I so appreciate this young lady’s ability to express the concerns of young students. I will say that I and my husband are probably the “exception to the rule” around here as we tell our oldest son the reality of getting into college and the pressures on him. He is 12, a 7th grader at Hillview. He is currently getting 3 Cs. He had his first Anxiety attack a few weeks ago. I told him the truth….Mom got into UCSC right our of HS by the skin of my teeth and decided to be a “ski bum” in Colorado for a year before attending because I could not pull it together to wrap my head around college. His Dad went to SD state and dropped out due to lack of focus. We both then attended JCs and then I went back to UCSC and my husband went on to Santa Clara University and we did quite well. My point being….Not all parents put this unrealistic pressure on their kids and we need to be honest and real with our kids. JC is OK. it’s OK to get a C or a D now and then. God, let’s just be happy and let them enjoy some down time. please!!!!!!

Carolyn,

So wonderfully well written.

Missing in most of the replies: ways YOU can reduce the amount of stress around you. Your needs are immediate, so consider these measures:

CLASSES: You will be registering for senior year classes soon. Befriend a senior to find out which classes assign less homework so you can sign up for a lighter load/fewer honors and APs, get 2 preps so you only have 5 classes in your day, and consider Middle College/taking a few required classes at Foothill next year too.

SAT: Junior year is the most stressful year for all the reasons you mentioned but it and the SAT will be over soon. Know that great colleges are accessible to students with a wide range of scores and many don’t require SATs. http://www.fairtest.org/university/optional

PEERS: You list friends who make you feel badly in comparison with troubled friendships, relationships, jealousy, identity issues, drugs, and alcohol. Be strong and stay true to what you know is right for you. Get closer to classmates who value you. Distance yourself from those who don’t. Run away from classmates who take drugs and drink. It only takes one good friend to make a world of difference.

DESPAIR: The sad truth is that about one in five of your classmates here and as elsewhere in the US have a mental disorder. http://www.joannejacobs.com/2013/05/cdc-1-in-5-kids-has-a-mental-disorder/ If you help them make healthy choices and guide them to help, you may feel better as a result too. Counseling services: pediatricians, Teacher Advisors and Paly’s junior class counselor. ACS too.

ANXIETY ATTACKS: The New York Times article I linked to above is a good primer on teen anxiety and how some escape it while others can’t and what can be done to help them. “Why Can Some Kids Handle Pressure While Others Fall Apart?” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/magazine/why-can-some-kids-handle-pressure-while-others-fall-apart.html?_r=0

TALK TO YOUR PARENTS and FRIENDS’ PARENTS: Parents are much wiser than teens give them credit for. If you open up to them as you have here, they will understand your needs. They can make home – yours and theirs – a pleasant environment. They can help you find supportive and positive friends. They will tell you why you do not need to “focus on getting straight A’s” and that it is NOT “necessary to have great apprehension regarding your grades.”

I hope that with some time and distance you will have good memories of growing up. Once outside Palo Alto, you will see children whose dreams are of a life filled with half of what children in our community have every day, imperfect as it is.

Given your empathy and keen focus on solutions, consider working to make it better for them. Lots of local agencies do this work and would love help from a teen as empathetic and articulate as you.

@15yearsago: Bravo. Well said.

It’s just as simplistic and counterproductive to put all blame/responsibility on teachers/administrators as it is on parents. Ascribe whatever percentages you like to each, but we should be able to agree it is not 100/0 or 0/100 in any direction. This is particularly true when referring to a *culture*, which comprises values and norms that are pressed by some, amplified by others, tolerated by many, and reinforced by self-perpetuation and the inherent inertia of large institutions.

This discussion reminds me that I wrote an op-ed piece for the Campanile (25 years ago!) exploring the roots of excellence in PA schools. I don’t have a copy today, but I can still remember the gist of the conclusion: That the three legs of the stool (talented students, good teachers, and engaged, supportive parents) were *all* necessary to achieve the kind of excellence that made us proud. In the same vein, it strikes me as reasonable that all three must play a role in easing the pressures of a hyper-competitive environment.

To Katie,
I got a 97% in Honors Chemisty at Paly. I was recommended to AP Chemistry. When I stuggled in AP Chemisty my teacher told me to have my parents hire a tutor. They can’t afford one, but did anyway. My tutor is actually a local Chemisty professor. With my tutor’s help I still couldn’t get higher than a C on my Labs. My tutor also pointed out that there were questions on the tests from future chapters in the book, not current material. I got a C in the class, but a 5 on the AP test. The 5 means I really understood the expected material for the AP course. Should I have not taken the class like you stated? Maybe could this be something the teacher could change? Maybe you need to rethink your judgement without being a current student.

In reading through these comments, many people including parents have proposed that this is not just a school district or teacher issue. However, every time someone makes that suggestion, they are immediately slammed for suggesting that parents may have some role in the pressure cooker that students are experiencing in this school district.

I’m curious are these people suggesting that parents bare no responsibility at all? Also, can we set aside as markers for success standardized test scores, grades and college admissions and replace them for something much more holistic? Would this community embrace something like this? If so, what markers would you use?

@Katie — your suggestion that the student doesn’t belong in the class is misguided. Some Palo Alto teachers make the AP courses extremely difficult and add on loads of extra homework.

Read again Paly Student’s post: “I got a 97% in Honors Chemisty at Paly. I was recommended to AP Chemistry. When I stuggled in AP Chemisty my teacher told me to have my parents hire a tutor. They can’t afford one, but did anyway. My tutor is actually a local Chemisty professor. With my tutor’s help I still couldn’t get higher than a C on my Labs. My tutor also pointed out that there were questions on the tests from future chapters in the book, not current material. I got a C in the class, but a 5 on the AP test. The 5 means I really understood the expected material for the AP course. Should I have not taken the class like you stated? Maybe could this be something the teacher could change? Maybe you need to rethink your judgement without being a current student. “

My son had the same experience. If you read this thread through, you will see many comments about harsh grading and excessive homework. I no longer have children in the schools, but this tells you that these problems have been going on for many years.

I wonder if this mentality of “success at any cost” has to do with disappearance of middle class, and the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Maybe parents think that if their kids do not make it to the top income class, they will fall into poverty, since there is no middle class to fall back into? This kind of parental anxiety can easily be transferred to the kids, sometimes without even saying it out loud.
Maybe as parents we need to address this problem of rich vs poor at a national level, in order to save our children and our country?

Re: Excessive HW

Both of my daughters graduated from Gunn High. For a long time, I shared the similar “excessive HW” view since they were spending 3-4 hours a night. After an eye-opening teacher conference, I decided to implement tech free evenings as recommended by my daughter’s teacher. Guess what! their 3-4 hours hw became 1-2 hours. I am not saying this is the case with your students. But, don’t you want to find out?