Contrary to what Disney’s High School Musical led eight-year-old me to believe, high school isn’t some sing-along adventure.  At times, it’s really rough.  Thankfully, students at Liberty are lucky enough to have teachers in every department who understand this and work to alleviate the stress of balancing challenging courses and extracurricular with just growing up and finding yourself.

My US History teacher’s favorite saying is, “I’m the net,” and he’s right : when students fall down, their teachers are there to help them get back up on their feet, as long as the student takes the first step towards getting help.  Every teacher I’ve ever had stays after school on most days and is willing to help students who want to come in to clarify concepts that they don’t understand.  Many come in early before school to accommodate an even larger body of students, and I’ve even known some to donate their prep period to students who can only be here during school hours.

But some teachers do even more than give extra assistance.  Most have very flexible yet reasonable policies for making up absent work and even helping alleviate test anxiety.  For example, my math teacher last year would allow anxious students to take unit tests before or after school so they wouldn’t have to do it in a distracting environment full of other test takers.

Teachers with these and similar policies might be judged as being too easy on students, but I don’t think that’s the case.  They just understand that high school is hard and sometimes other things get in the way and make it harder, and if a struggling student communicates their problem to them, they will find a way to accommodate him.  I just wanted to say thank you, from me and countless others, to all of Liberty’s teachers, for making high school just a little easier.