Most public schools are required to teach to the test, which means teaching the material that’s going to be on the students standardized tests. This means a style of learning that for many students is ineffective. Not all students learn the same way, and this method of teaching can be particularly difficult for those with learning impairments. For this reason, I feel it is important to have more schools like The New School, a smaller community that allows for each student to learn at their own pace and in the best way possible for them.

In 2018-2019, 7.1 million, or 14 percent of students in public schools received special education services, and of those students, 33% had a specific learning disability. If more schools treated students as individuals with individual needs instead of just as numbers, then those students would be more likely to succeed in school and life.

Before coming to The New School my brother, who was recently diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome, went to a local public school. Due to his impairment, learning was difficult, and the school did little to help other than to remove him from the classroom to keep him from disrupting the class. Even when he was listening, the subjects the teacher discussed we’re so beyond his understanding that he was barely learning anything.

I had a similar experience at my previous school. I don’t have a learning impairment, but because of my vision, it was sometimes difficult for me to do what the teachers expected, especially once I hit seventh grade.

Being at The New School has changed the way I look at learning, and I can safely say that it set me and my brother on the road to success. If more schools were like TNS, then more students like my brother and me would be able to learn in a way that’s best for their individual needs.

Have you ever heard someone say, “Video games rot your mind!”? Many people perceive video games as a waste of time, they make you socially isolated, and rot your mind. However that’s not necessarily true. 67% or roughly 211 million people play video games in the United States. And resulting from that factor are a small percentage of people who are the type who play for many hours a day and isolate from the rest of the world. Most “gamers” are what we consider casual gamers who play from time to time but not consecutively every single day. The image of “rotting your brain” from video games is not true from all video games, and is a very controversial matter.

Are Video games really bad for you?

The constant arguments and articles coming out on the subject, “are video games good for you,” have always been more of a personal opinion than facts. Science facilities have done research about what types of video games might make you sick or other symptoms. And yes I will say some video games might be better for you than others. Researchers at the University of Montreal did an experiment and tested by having people play first person shooter games for a total of 90 hours, and a team of people play Mario games for a total of 90 hours. They made the conclusion that first person shooters and more violent games can lower the gray matter, a substance needed for personal awareness and memory. Researcher Gregory West from the University of Montreal worked for four years on the studies of first person shooters and violent video games. They concluded that the part of the brain that stores the memory and the ability to recall past events is drastically lowered. These might alter slightly for the age difference, but there are some games that might be considered worse than others.

Age restrictions for video games

Sometimes a kid plays too many video games and the parents take to Facebook saying, “My kid is rotting their mind of violent video game meh meh meh,” but really some people aren’t doing everything they can and ruining it for the people that do want to play. Things parents and instructors can do is set restrictions and make sure the games they play are appropriate for the age line and not they shouldn’t be. So the next time you decide to rant on Twitter, remember to check everything first.

Things that video game can help with

Video games can help with a multiple of things. These days things are stressful and people are looking for a way to do things that take their minds off current events and work. Video games can also make one feel at ease. It’s a feeling that if you make a right or wrong choice that it will only affect the game and you didn’t mess something up in real life.

Potatoes are loved by all and eaten by all, unless you have an allergy. Potatoes are eaten around the world. There are many, many ways to cook potatoes including: French fries, hash browns, many different soups, baked potatoes, and many more.

Potatoes have been grown for a very long time. The first potato recorded was in the region of modern-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia between 8000 and 5000 BC. That means that potatoes have been eaten (most likely) around the world for thousands of years.

Potatoes are one of the most important food crops in terms of human consumption. More than a billion people worldwide eat potatoes, and global total crop production exceeds 300 million metric tons. There are more than 4,000 varieties of native potatoes, mostly found in the Andes. They come in many sizes and shapes.

In the USA potatoes are mostly grown in Idaho and about 13 billion potatoes are grown each year. If that’s true then it means that everyone in the entire world could probably have 2 potatoes, just from Idaho!!! That’s a TON of potatoes (not weight). And I am 99% sure that everyone at some point in their lives eats some form of potato, doesn’t matter how it looks or tastes, just something made from potatoes.

In conclusion, potatoes are delicious, and I recommend people eat them and enjoy them and cook with them and grow them, all sorts of things with potatoes. After all there’s plenty to go around.