Everything Changed When I Started Learning My Own Way
Last week, I finally graduated from high school, and while I’m quite a sentimental person, I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of relief that my days in school are over. For most of my years in school, I had this gnawing feeling inside that something was wrong with me. I couldn’t pay attention like the other kids, found studying difficult, and had little to no enthusiasm about any school subject. I also thought most of my classes were irrelevant, of no benefit to my future, and an overall waste of my time. Why does studying for a chemistry test take hours out of my day when I have no intention of being a chemist? Why do my friends stress over calculus when the majority of what they've learned will become irrelevant after high school? Much of school confused me. I didn’t quite understand the point of it all.
Nonetheless, I still strove to fulfill the role of a “good student.” I’d force myself to sit through the lectures and complete the assignments, even when they seemed meaningless. I genuinely enjoyed some of my classes but most felt mentally draining, like I was always playing catch-up. What frustrated me the most was how easy it was for everyone else. What I had to force myself to do came effortlessly to them.
I spent a lot of time blaming myself for the “issues” I had with school. I was convinced there surely had to be something, a skill or habit, that I was lacking. I tried nearly every method out there. Pomodoro timers. Exercises to increase my attention span. ADHD medication. I even saved up for cute school supplies in hopes they would somehow increase my motivation. The tricks worked briefly. I found myself listening in class for an extra five minutes and taking better notes when I had a cute set of pens. But it masked a much bigger issue: I was trying to learn like my peers, not like me. I was bending over backwards to try to change my brain instead of trying to understand it.
Working overtime to conform only made learning much more difficult. After years of nitpicking my learning style, I realized there wasn’t much wrong with it at all. Instead, my environment simply wasn’t fit for how I operate, an issue I’m sure many other students can relate to. But most don't seem to know it doesn't have to be that way.
I learned this during my junior year. The years prior, my GPA was around a 2.6. On paper, I wasn’t the best student but I loved learning. I came home every day to read non-fiction books, listen to interesting podcasts, and binge-watch TED talks. With all the random facts I could spew out at family dinners and the big dreams I had for myself, you would never guess how difficult school was for me. I took some time the summer before junior year to get to know myself, since at that point, conforming to everyone else’s learning style had become more draining than school itself. I learned that I love interactive hands-on lessons, memorize best if I take notes while hearing material at the same time, and prefer when learning feels like a game. I started curating my school life to work for me. I had ChatGPT turn my study guides into interactive quizzes for me to quiz myself on, and used YouTube videos to review material both before and after school. I also found ways I could track my to-do lists, which I organized in a way that made sense for me. That year, I got all As. Easily. I was shocked at how much time I had wasted trying to learn like everyone else when in reality I thrive when I learn in my own way.
School fails to recognize this. Many educators don't seem to realize that every student learns differently. We come from unique backgrounds and belief systems, each of which has defined our individual view of the world. While school is made to prepare us for the world after high school, I would argue the opposite: it prepares us to suppress the parts of ourselves that make us capable of thriving.
How often do we ask students to answer true or false questions, memorize a math formula, or recall a specific definition? How often can a student explain why the math formula works the way it does, instead of simply following it step-by-step? When do we encourage creativity in the classroom? Critical thinking? When I was a student myself, I can attest that it wasn’t often I found myself thinking “outside of the box” to answer homework questions. Studying for a test can be done with flashcards. Terms and definitions can be repeated until I remember. I don’t have to comprehend why the Pythagorean theorem works or what it is; I just have to know “A squared + B squared = C squared.” Yet while knowing this may get me a decent score on my math test, I may lack any real understanding of the math concept itself. Going off grades, you would never know.
Skills like creativity, critical thinking, and curiosity are pushed to the side in today's school system. School today has become about grades, not learning. Moreover, what makes recollection possible in the brain is relevance. If my brain deems my math class to be useless, the Pythagorean theorem won't matter in three months, no matter how well I comprehend it. Our current approach to education is clearly flawed.
I was lucky enough to experience something different in the fifth grade, which came from one of the best teachers I ever had: Mr. Troy. He was the first teacher I ever had who focused less on how he taught and more on how his students learned. He got to know us individually–our interests, personalities, and the learning style we resonated with (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc). Mr. Troy never put any external pressure on us when it came to our test scores or the results we got on the homework he assigned. He focused instead on growth, giving us lessons on what it meant to have a growth mindset and encouraging us to correct our mistakes rather than punish ourselves for them. What I loved the most (and what other kids envied) was how understanding Mr. Troy was. He knew we were ten-year-olds with short attention spans, and so he catered his classroom environment perfectly for us fifth graders. He had hands-on games to learn math concepts, two-minute breaks every fifteen minutes, fidget toys to use during lectures, and catchy rhymes to help us memorize key points from his lessons. Mr. Troy was a perfect example of what it meant to have school be a place for students to learn, rather than for teachers to teach.
Mr. Troy made a key point in one of his classes that really stuck with me. He shared his frustration with how school typically grades students and how we should be measuring or at least looking at a student's work in terms of growth. To illustrate the fault in our current grading system, he asked us to imagine taking three hypothetical tests throughout the school year: one at the start, another in the middle, and the last at the end of the year. If you scored a 0% on the first test, but a 50% on the second, you would’ve made a drastic improvement. However, despite this, you would still be seen as “failing.” If you took the third test at the end of the year and scored a 100%, you would also have made significant progress from both the first and second tests. However, after averaging out the three scores of 0, 50, and 100, you would get 50%, which is considered an “F”. Therefore, based on the grading criteria of the school, you would’ve failed the class. But by Mr. Troy’s logic, you would've grown a whole lot and done amazingly in the class.
Mr. Troy used this analogy to emphasize the problem with how we measure and evaluate students in our modern school system. His approach to education, which was based solely on growth, made his students feel more comfortable taking risks. We could raise our hand without fear of saying the wrong answer, or we could totally bomb a test and know we could still get the help we needed without any judgment. I remember how engaged I felt in his classroom. I felt cared for and seen as a learner in ways I hadn’t previously. Mr. Troy was only at my school for one year and left after teaching our class. Yet, years later, my peers and I still talk about the way he ran his classroom.
No school system will ever be “perfect”. Whether a teacher decides to teach traditionally or in their own manner, like Mr. Troy did, there will always be a kid who feels “out of place.” Some students do perfectly fine in traditional school environments. They thrive on memorization, outlines, and standardized tests. Others, like myself, find such environments difficult; we thrive when thinking outside of the box. For both, a one-size-fits-all approach won't work.
This is why I believe the classroom should be inclusive and student-centered. Educators have the power to encourage progress over perfection and take time to understand each student’s learning style. They can tweak lesson plans to be a bit more inclusive to all types of learners with engaging visuals, audio, or even activities that involve movement. Students should be able to have an environment where they can self-advocate and communicate their learning needs–and feel safe enough with their teacher to do so.
Students thrive best when we learn in a way that makes sense for us. I know I sure did. I was able to go from a questionable GPA to getting As so easily, I took up online college courses. I just graduated from high school, but credit-wise, I’ll be entering college as a senior. I was also able to use what I learned about my learning style to acquire more skills. I took up a part-time sales job, started public speaking, and began to dive into topics like artificial intelligence and marketing. Within a year, my resume grew to be three pages long simply because I worked with myself, not against myself.
I truly believe each of us would find a smoother and more relevant path if we focused on how we operate as individuals rather than meeting someone else's idea of how we “should” be operating. This is exactly what the school system should be focusing on: supporting and uplifting students in their own learning styles.
Mahealani Jackson is a 17-year-old entrepreneur and incoming student at the Shidler College of Business, where she’ll be pursuing a BBA in Marketing. She founded Optivize Media, an AI-powered marketing agency where she helps businesses grow their online presence and market in smarter ways using artificial intelligence. Mahealani recently graduated from high school while simultaneously earning her associate’s degree, and is passionate about reshaping education and empowering students to thrive on their own terms.