My voice is not traveling, my voice is not loud enough on its own.

I know that your voices are out there.

You have all told me once or twice that you agree. That you feel the same way.

But when I look up, I still see this enormous wall that won’t come down.

It’s chipped in all the right places, but it’s still standing too strong.

All over my facebook, I see people bringing others down. Others opinions, others choices, others beliefs. I began to realize that a lot of people see change as raising their voices and hurting someone.

When I realized that, I backed down. I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to be someone that rips apart another human to achieve change. There had to be a different way to do it. How could it be a good change if you take someone down in the process?

So I resorted myself to a quieter voice. A voice that planned and dreamed.

But it is not enough.

I have had conversations with  people who are currently in the school system.

It is breaking my heart.

It is pulling apart my resolve to remain kind and calm.

It fills me with a desire to declare war on those who are ruining people in the classroom.

When people ask me why I say I want to home-school my currently non-existent kids, I want to tell them that it’s not really my choice.

But I don’t. I can not explain why as an eighteen year old, I am constantly thinking about my childrens education. I can not explain that yes, I know life takes you on wild rides, and home-schooling can very possibly not be an option for my family, but I like to hope.

Because if I don’t get to home-school my children, where will I send them?

I know people who are afraid of their teachers.

This is not about respect, this is about pure fear. This is about developing anxiety in the classroom, because you are scared of your teacher mocking you in front of your classmates.  This is about learning to hate school, not because it gives you added responsibilities, but because there is no way for you not to fail, and you are taught that failure is wrong.

This is about report cards that do not reflect a students excitement about science experiments, it only shows their struggle in English class.

This is about children who used to enjoy learning new things, and school has stolen that feeling for them.

This is about too many tears shed, too many panic attacks, too many students in bathrooms cutting class, because they are afraid.

This is about homework assignments that last all night, after school independent study because the teacher could not fit that information into the period, testing that does not accurately measure more than half of the students understanding of a lesson.

This is about the fact that my principals would not let me graduate High School because of their own mistake, and created so many problems for me continuously throughout the summer.

This is about the fact that I lost trust in authority to help me because when they should have been there for me, they waged a war against me.

This is about the fact that a few months ago I wrote something miserably honest about high school, but things are still the same.

This is about the fact that corn tortillas still make me cry.

This is about the fact that I enjoyed high school because I made friends and we had a good time, but as that was happening, I was also growing to hate learning.

This is about the fact that a good social life is used as a band aid for the fact that nobody is actually learning anything.

This is about the fact that I can’t watch things continue like this.

Someone once told me that instead of bringing already established people and programs down, the way to make change is to start something new.

I agreed. It made sense with my ideology of being kind and promoting positive change.

But by the time I can do something about this, hundreds of students will have gone through the damaging school system.

I was hurt in high school.

I have developed into a person, who granted, would be different if I had not had those experiences.

But those experiences are not necessary for a person to grow into a strong, secure person.

Those experiences brought me down. They made me fearful and doubtful. They made me angry and sad.

Nobody deserves that.

My children deserve better. My children deserve to see learning in a positive light, to see growth as a desired goal, to see authority as figures to be respected and learned from.

Your children do too.

Your siblings.

Your nephews and nieces.

Your cousins and grandchildren.

Please, help me.

Do we have to bring down an established organization? I don’t want to. Why can’t we work with them though? Why can’t we demand change, demand that they open their eyes and think about the students for once?

When the next person asks me why I want to home-school, I want to be able to tell them that turns out, I don’t need to. Because there are so many better options out there.