Growing up, I never felt successful in school. Reading 20-30 pages of a textbook, taking notes, and then practically throwing up every detail of information I could onto a piece of paper for the test ... It was the worst. Here’s the thing, most of my classmates would do this, hate it, but score an A or a B on the test.

Personally, if I got a C, I would be happy with it. I remember a classmate of mine overhearing my test grade in high school and she turned to me and said: “I thought you were supposed to be smart.” Those words still sting to this day. Just because I don’t learn best by reading and regurgitating information doesn’t mean I’m not smart. If there is one thing the modern system of education has taught me, it's that grades do not reflect intelligence.

As much as grades do not reflect intelligence, I can't say that they don't control where we end up at first. They factor into your future and there isn't a lot we can to do control that.

Science, math, history: it didn’t matter how hard I tried or how much I studied, I was never able to score a good grade. I didn’t get a decent grade in history until my junior year of high school when I spent 7 hours on a Friday night making a movie about my grandmother’s childhood during the Great Depression. Foreign languages: I barely passed a single test, until my senior year, when I spent 13 hours (I kid you not) building a scrapbook on a French artist and their life story. The classes I excelled in were English, orchestra, writing, and art.

There is something wrong with the modern system of education that we have. Between Common Core and standardized tests, I had anxiety and I would feel worthless and pathetic after I took them in high school. Why? Because no matter how hard I studied, I never did well. I’m not a good test taker and I never will be.

Our system of education ruins creativity. We are taught to see the world a certain way and we are taught to feel a certain way. It is a system that is designed to compare students and their rates of success.

Why do we have standardized testing and common core? To make sure that our students are at a high level of success; are we actually learning though? We have a common core so we can schedule each child from grade school until they graduate. So we are all learning the same thing the same way. We should be learning the same thing, but maybe not the same way.

What happens to kids who don’t thrive in our system of education? It ruins school for us, learning becomes a nuisance, we are easily set back by failure and it results in many of us not wanting to continue with school.

As a future teacher, I currently work with Elementary School kids after school. I already see how brilliant each of them will be. But, I see the future restrictions that many of them will face. Art and creativity are not as supported in our current systems of education; they are looked down upon for unfortunate reasons.

As a future teacher and person with a passion for art and writing, I hope to allow kids to express themselves, give them an opportunity to create, and show that not everything is learned from a textbook.

Currently, we need to work on allowing creativity, art, and room for self-expression in our education system. Kids should be allowed to show their brilliance through projects of their choice, fewer tests, and self-expression should be smiled upon.

School should be fun, kids should want to learn; they should find happiness and joy out of their work. We shouldn’t have an education system where homework brings anxiety and walking into a classroom is a daily dread for our kids. That’s not what learning and life are about.

I want to see my kids smiling the way these kids were at my job. Smiling because they feel smart, loved, brave, and most importantly, successful.