Larger class sizes, e-learning, and cutting courses.

How out of touch are we if we believe this is what this young generation that’s struggling with isolation needs for good education?

In the past few weeks, teachers have gone on rotating strikes, fighting against these cuts that they feel would negatively impact student learning. In response Ontario’s Education Minister, Stephen Lecce is throwing blame at teacher unions, saying that their protest is hurting students.

But how are such decisions made for our future generations if we don’t understand their day-to-day struggles?

Speaking to many Gen Zers over the past year, from those involved in the #StudentsSayNo protest which saw thousands of students flooding Queen’s Park to fight against cuts to courses, to these rolling strikes which have impacted students’ exam schedules, I saw many who want to see education improving the lives of students.

Last April, I spoke to a Grade 12 student named Layan Rasoul who said, “Students with little or no internet access have a right to in-person education; they should not be forced to learn online. Students who need extra help with school have a right to one-on-one education and help — a right that will be taken away with Ford’s increase in class sizes and decrease in teaching positions.”

I found many similarities in the anxieties students like Rasoul faced with my own experience as a millennial in high school. Aside from the normal pressures of getting good grades, fitting in, and graduating, many people in high school face a different beast — the online world.

As much as we use it to stay informed, there are still many repercussions for a culture whose currency is swipes, likes, and reshares. A 2017 CAMH survey on Ontario student drug use and health found the percentage of students between Grades 7 and 12 reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression had jumped by 15 per cent since 2013. Experts say this is the result of social media becoming more rampant in our lives.

I experienced this in my own high school years. Social media taught us what beauty was, by way of the Kardashians, supermodels, and celebs that everyone wanted to emulate. People wanted to wear the right things and post photos for likes and to gain more followers on Facebook and Instagram.

But I got lost in the online world because it failed to portray the dimensions of real life which, for me, was crippling depression and anxiety from unresolved trauma. Social media was a distraction — a place where I presented myself as fun and full of light — much different from real life struggles which were uncool to speak about.

It wasn’t until I met a teacher, Ms. Gluskin, in my civics class that I truly began to find and value myself outside of social media. Beyond spending her early mornings and after school hours assisting students on their projects, she cared about us as humans. I could share my struggles with her, ones that you couldn’t see on my face at school or on my online presence.

As a teacher running student council and other school clubs, she had limited time to juggle the problems of her students — but still, the minute or two where students could share their anxieties changed us for the better. In our classroom, instead of staring into a computer, we were taught to debate topics face-to-face, which taught us how to care about causes, which in turn helped us build an identity and value system.

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To this day, if I’ve written a story I’m proud of, I’ll send it to her, as gratitude for her impact on my life. That she made it happen. That I was here as a success story because of the time and care she gave me and every one of her students. And there are countless other stories of how a teacher’s impact has changed the lives of their students.

And that’s why I fear these changes the most. Though I’ve been blessed to have such a positive influence in my life, I’ve seen my own generation become anti-social. Many recent studies show that millennials dislike speaking with humans including one that showed that our generation would prefer to give up tasks that involved human interaction to robots. So one is left to wonder, how much worse will it get for Gen Z now that social media has become more addictive than ever?

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