Good morning. My name is Ashanti Provost. As I've grown up, I found a love for taking care of children and helping people grow. I chose this project because I want to go to school to be on the board of education and help change the system so that students actually
enjoy school and learn things that are going to help us in our adult lives. I would like to mention the things peers and I feel that we missed in our high school careers. I don't wish to offend anyone, of course, but I feel the need to mention the gap between the lessons that we learn in school and the ones
that we need throughout adulthood. Students feel that a proportion of the subjects and skills we learn in school won't actually help us in the real world when it comes to like little details, you know? Both students and teachers also feel that a lot of students
a lot of skills that we will need for adulthood don't actually get taught to us in school. High school does a great job at preparing us for college. Does a great job at preparing us for getting ready for our careers and the next step into actual like furthering our education.
But when it comes to actual life skills that we need like home economics and mental health studies and lots of things that we'll need more on a daily rather than in a career or education status, we tend to skip out on learning those
skills and opportunities. During the process of my project, I had a meeting with a teacher that has been working with Holyoke school systems since before the MCAS started and before the state took over our school systems. She explained that before the state took
over public schooling, there used to be a lot more opportunities of students being able to do a lot of hands-on work, a lot of field trips, a lot of getting to meet new people and have new opportunities to be able to
learn life skills just being able to be hands-on. Yet, when the state took over and MCAS became a priority, we missed out on a lot of things like field trips and collaborative projects.
One of my favorite things that she said was that when she first started teaching, there used to be this project that she used to do that was every grade would you take the entire year to work on one project getting as much information, as many resources, and
going on as many field trips as possible to be able to actually get like the real life experience and learn things like collaboration and problem-solving and the little life skills that we learn
along the way without actually having to sit down and teach it on a board in the classroom. When I started my project, the first thing that I wanted to do, of course, is get a basis on what actual skills teenagers need by certain ages.
According to Cover Letters and Resume or No, I'm sorry. According to Mama Bean Parenting, at 15, we should be able to at least learn how to cook a basic meal, know proper basic first aid skills, know
basic personal hygiene, and have basic time management skills. At 16, this is Cover Letters and Resume, says that we should be able to have basic adaptability and problem-solving skills, public speaking practice, organizational
skills, and a good work ethic. At 17, Let me erase here. Uh according to parents.com, we should be able to have accountability, average time management skills, and be able to ask for help comfortably.
When talking about 17, which is our junior year, I focused a lot more on the mental health aspect, instead of actually what we can learn to be able to have like basic skills. I've noticed and was told by a lot of my peers that
junior year is a very hard time mentally for students. And it's a big struggle throughout the year to be able to keep up with our mental health, as well as getting through the preparation for our senior year. And according to Rustic Pathways, at 18,
we should be able to take risks without too much fear of failure, have good financial literacy, believe in ourselves, and be able to comfortably use a majority of the skills that were mentioned before. Of course, nobody has to be perfect,
especially in high school. But, the best way to start building up these skills so that we are prepared in adulthood is to be able to start introducing them throughout our education, and especially in high school, when it's that final step before we get sent off to be on our
own. For my step two, I put out surveys to both teachers and students about how they feel we could learn things these things in classrooms, if it would be possible to do so, and
what students feel like they should learn in a classroom setting. One difficulty that I had was, of course, as mentioned in a few other presentations before, is students' involvement and actually wanting to answer surveys. So, I got very little
details from students, but I did get lots of details from teachers. I had teachers who were reaching out to me, having meetings with me, and that were really along with me the entire time. Like Mr. Quinones and like a few other
teachers that I don't see too too many of course right now. Too too many here today. But I wanted to focus on some specific skills that I talked about with teachers that they feel could be actually taught in classrooms.
100% of teachers that first aid classes would be beneficial to students. This is because they believe that only about 24% of students can be trusted to give basic first aid in case of an emergency. A way that it could be taught in school is to have it be a unit in health class.
We have a health class in school, but I believe it would be beneficial for us to have a instead of just a semester of health class, have multiple semesters, at least one per year to where we can actually expand on different units about things like first aid and in the future
I will mention mental health and other little things that we will just need as skills that just come with basic health. For sophomore teachers, I really focused on accountability and problem solving. Teachers have noticed that only about
54% of students are able to actually take accountability for their work and problem solve on their own. But 92% of teachers believe that it can be taught in classrooms. When it comes to both of these, the best way to teach is indirectly. Instead of telling students, you know, today we're
working on these skills or take out your math books, stuff like that. We can make activities where students have to go through different scenarios and create the best problems for those scenarios. One teacher had mentioned engineering class and how that's a big priority in engineering classes.
Next is juniors and seniors. For For juniors, teachers said that at least 43% of their students are showing signs of either anxiety or depression. But also, 80% of teachers believe that there are ways that we can teach students more about their emotions and
how to help with mental health issues. I believe though we could help students a lot by also making it into a unit into health class, as I mentioned before. By studying different common mental health disorders, students would be able to learn a lot more about emotions
they're having and better ways to be able to help themselves. This could come with just doing research projects or actually talking to psychiatrists and therapists and making it a very open environment so that students feel more comfortable when actually going through
symptoms that happen during mental health issues. And finally for seniors, financial literacy. Teachers say that only about 42% of their students have knowledge about financial literacy. We already have a class on this at Holokai and I've heard that it's
relatively good. But I feel like it's definitely accessible, but it's not as accessible as other classes. I didn't learn that we had a financial literacy class until my senior year when it was too late for me to take the class.
And I feel like it would be very beneficial for students to have a class like this be mandatory or have it in maybe math classes or something that will be able to not force us, but like relatively force us to have to learn
about these things instead of choosing to take the class. Next is highlights. My favorite part about this project was seeing all the responses that I got from teachers and from staff and seeing the amount of support on this topic that was
given by actual adults that can make a difference. I remember final the the day before I sent out the teacher survey, I had sent out the student survey and there as I mentioned before was not very many responses to it. But when I sent out the teacher survey
by the end of the day, there were already 33 responses from teachers that I didn't even know went to this school. I had emails, I had teachers that had called me to their classrooms and I had people that I didn't even know that
genuinely wanted to help make a difference. And that was definitely the best part about my project. Just being able to see everybody come together and actually want to be able to make a change. One thing that I didn't get to finish sadly yet is my mural. I wanted to have
a mural to be able to present an actual photo of that was supposed to represent the gross growth, not gross, from adolescence into graduation and how our minds and our bodies grow throughout childhood into adulthood. This is what I
have so far. It's in the hallway that's over there. Um due to Amazon complications, I was not able to finish it because Amazon does not like me apparently. But this is what it should look like by the end of the
For my future, as I mentioned before, I want to make my way up into the board of education. Of course, starting off, I want to be a teacher. I want to teach little kids. Little kids are the best. And I want to be able to implement things like critical thinking skills,
problem-solving skills and all these things that I had mentioned before into the education system from an earlier so that we don't have to put as much time and lessons into having to teach these skills as we're already in our
adolescence and this isn't the exact stuff that we want to be focusing on. We want to be focusing on the fun stuff. And so I believe that being able to be on the board of education and implement these skills from a much younger age will help
students be able to grow up into more well-rounded and successful adults. And I want to go to Assumption University in Worcester to major sword in early education and early
childhood brain development. Any questions? All right. Thank you for your presentation. I loved all the data and just the organization. Now you are someone for those of you that do not know Ashanti is
expected to be what the salutatorian is. Salutatorian. So Right there. Which is an enormous accomplishment because it indicates that you have had an enormous amount of academic success during your time at Holyoke High School. And
you you clearly have your thoughts on improving the system. I would like to know your thoughts off the top of your head about the education that you received in your years in as a Holyoke High School student. I've been mostly happy with the
education that I've received in the school. Like I said before, we have financial literacy classes and I remember Mr. Don was the best one. I took health and there has been a lot of classes like senior seminar and like freshman seminar that do
try to help us a lot more when it comes to being in a school environment and that do try to like in freshman seminar set you up for the next 4 years or senior seminar that's getting us ready for college and helping with applications and stuff like that. But I do feel like I've missed out on
also a lot of skills that I feel like like I mentioned before financial literacy. Didn't know that it was a class until after I already chose my classes. Or implementing a lot more problem-solving things or where I actually have to learn how to solve
things on my own instead of have there be a set answer to where I know I can just ask the teacher for help. Would have been a lot would have been a beneficial for me when going into college and having to make decisions on my own. I'm so proud of you because
I had you freshman year and this was your third year back in ninth grade. So I love that you have continued that passion. Um you always pushed me to why why is it relevant? Like I know relevance matters so why am I why am I living with relevance in my life? Um throughout your
high school experience how many teachers did you feel comfortable pushing for asking that why or how many teachers you sought changing their projects or their outcomes of what they were expecting for you to feel like you were getting out of it something? For the first question I
feel like 100% of my teachers I can just be like why are we doing this or what's this lesson supposed to be about? Holy cow has great teachers. I love all of you guys. Um when it comes to actually changing like lessons and stuff like that like you mentioned
I understand that it's 100% difficult for teachers so of course they have curriculums that they have to follow rules that they have to do. Like I had talked to the other teacher before she had to take out so many things out of her lessons that she wanted to be able
to teach students about that because it doesn't follow a specific curriculum, they weren't able to touch upon in her class anymore. And so I feel like my teachers have 100% when I asked explained and when able to push more for
that like next step they can, but I feel like there's a great restriction in what teachers are and aren't allowed to do. Um hi Shanti. Hi Lily. Um so the mental health aspect of everything I'm very interested in I'm a psych major we connect on that like kind of level. Um
my question to you is how do you plan on getting students to get over the limitation of mental health stigma? So that is a very big thing that I was trying to think about and
I feel like bringing in actual professionals that can tell us like instead of having to actually sit down and have like a therapy session that can like show us Sorry, I'm trying to find the best way to say this.
Bringing in actual professionals prof- professionals that can teach us about how common it is to have certain mental health issues and how accessible ways that we can help ourselves will can be and how to have different coping
mechanisms and have different things that we can do on our own as well as put out the fact that it is okay to need help and it is okay to need these resources. So instead of making it so that students have to ask for these resources, they're given to
them already so that anxiety of okay, well I don't want to look weird or I don't want to have to depend on people already goes out the window. Thank you. Anything else? That's awesome. So one idea that I had that I just
couldn't fit into the slides was making it based off of grade and based off of how much students like will actually need to think about financial literacy in that years of their life. I feel like for freshmen and sophomores, keep it as a thing where it is an elective and
something that they don't relatively like have to take, but figuring out how to implement into certain like math lessons on like just bring in the aspect of money in word problems or bring in certain things and topics that we could use, like I said, in word problems to
where we can actually solve equations based off of real-life scenarios, which I feel like a lot of our teachers a lot of our math teachers do already implement into classrooms. Um and in junior and senior year, I feel like it should be a requirement to where it can fill up one of those elective
spots, but it's elective where you have to take. Hi. So Um I know you said that students feel like it's too late to like really get the information that they were that they were supposed to learn for the past
4 years. >> Mhm. So future generations are raising kids with standards that they didn't really learn in school, right? Do you think that there's a way to extend the knowledge that you that they you teach these these incoming students to the
parents through maybe resources or something so that parents also are able to get like the new like new information. Yeah, 100%. I mean, there's of course ways that we can have like activities where parents come in. There are ways that we can have I mean, even
if it were just like a weekend thing like study sessions or being able to sit down, have parents come and sit down with teachers and students and be able to work on things as a community maybe. Um that's not a question that I've thought about much. I've tried to focus
a little bit too much on school, I guess. But, I feel like definitely making the community more involved and having a lot more group activities with parents would be able to help implement these ideas into actual households.