Voices

A Student’s Voice: Stirring a Passion for Learning By Kourosh Zamanizadeh

Already, at 17, Kourosh Zamanizadeh has been at the table with some of Washington state’s biggest movers and shakers, weighing in on education reform policy and legislation. Serving as Western Washington’s elected student representative to the state board of education, he urged lawmakers to fully fund the state’s new graduation requirements, nearly in place when he came on the board. Then, he set about helping to create a student-led program, the Student-2-Student Engagement Project, in which juniors and seniors explain the new graduation requirements to freshmen and how they can make the most of their high school experience (www.k12.wa.us/S2S/). The class of 2008 will be the first class to be required to pass the 10th-grade reading, writing, and math sections of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning exam in order to graduate from high school. This fall, Zamanizadeh will enter UC, Berkeley where he will pursue either a pre-med or a business major.

Compared with many of my peers, I believe I possess a unique outlook on high school. I understand what my parents had to go through to get their education when they immigrated to the United States from Iran more than 20 years ago. As a result, I regard school as a privilege rather than an obligation. Also, seeing firsthand the struggle many students around the world face in pursuing their education has provided me additional motivation to take advantage of the available resources and opportunities for my education.

I visited Iran during the summer between seventh and eighth grade. It was intended to be a fun trip. Instead, it turned out to be devastating. My dad was forced to stay home due to work commitments so it was just me, my mother, and my little brother, traveling to the other side of the world to Tehran, Iran. I was 12 years old and had the responsibility of looking after my mother and younger brother. We faced many of the typical difficulties of traveling internationally, such as dealing with stringent airport security, customs, and long airport stops. Once we arrived in Iran, I hoped the “fun” would begin. That changed after my uncle became very ill. My mother spent almost the entire 52-day trip at the hospital with her sick brother.

I hated the way the medical system worked there. The doctors acted as if they thought they were God and were very rude. There wasn’t any sense of caring toward the patients in the hospitals. I believe they had the mindset that since they had such a high education, that put them above everyone else and gave them the right to look down on everyone, including the patients whose lives were in their hands. It was a very sad experience, especially after my uncle died days after we arrived back home. This somehow opened my eyes to the real world and helped me find a passion for helping others. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do, but I was certain I would become involved in community service. After returning from Iran, I became actively involved in many service clubs-Associated Student Body (ASB), the Washington Association of Student Councils, and eventually the Washington State Board of Education.

This experience, along with seeing how seriously students in Iran view their education in order to pass tests that determine whether or not they will go to college, really had an impact on me. I saw these students study as though their lives depended on passing the exams. While my mother was with her brother in the hospital, I stayed with our relatives. I couldn’t believe that it was summer break and my cousins would still spend their days studying. I’d ask them what they were doing and if they were crazy. They would look at me and say that they were just trying to get a head start on the coursework to come. They were doing everything they possibly could to have an opportunity to continue their education at the postsecondary level. This desire and passion to learn was drastically different from many students’ outlook on school in the United States. Here, students feel they are being forced to go to school. In contrast, students around the world dream of going to school.

These two experiences have had a strong influence on my outlook on both life and education. When I earned the opportunity to serve as a student representative to the Washington State Board of Education and as a member of the Washington Association of Student Councils (WASC), I was very excited. It was a chance to work with both my peers and adult educators/mentors to spread my desire for learning to students in Washington state.

My service as a student representative to the state board and as a member of the WASC has been a powerful experience. It has been a tremendous responsibility to represent the 1.2 million K-12 students in Washington. I have had the opportunity to be involved in the continuing dialogue and policy discussion on reforming the state’s education system. Yet, as a student, I’ve felt that while great improvements are being made, too many students remain unaware of the changes due to a communication gap between adults and students. Our state’s top education leaders and legislators hoped that crucial information regarding education reform would simply permeate down to the students. When this approach failed, it was clear that a new path was needed.

It all began at a lunchtime meeting of the state board of education. The board had invited a panel of students from all around the state to share some of their high school experiences. After some discussion, it was evident that these students had no idea what the purpose was behind education reform in the state. Even worse, they felt they were trapped in a monotonous routine of going to school, doing their assignments, and anxiously counting off the days until graduation. Simply put, they just didn’t know what was going on outside the classroom to try and improve their schooling. These students were not engaged in their own education. After discussions with the state board of education and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson, the WASC Board was asked if it would take the lead in creating a product that would engage students in their own education and help them realize the value of school.

It has been 18 months since that lunchtime conversation. The WASC board is now heading the largest student-led community service project in our state’s history: the Student-2-Student Engagement Project. This project helps students make the connection between what they are learning in school and how it is relevant to their future. Student leaders around the state who serve on the WASC board have developed, produced, and appeared in a video that is a supplement to a toolkit that also includes a comprehensive lesson plan. The video and lesson plan explain recent education reforms and new graduation requirements that will first apply to the graduating class of 2008. (Visit the Student-2-Student Web site at www.k12.wa.us/S2S/).

The Student-2-Student project will help this year’s ninth-graders plan for their post-high school future using the resources available to them. Older students will be providing vital information about the new graduation requirements to the ninth-graders. The principle of this project is that the message is from students to students because, sometimes, learning from peers can be more meaningful than hearing things from parents or teachers.

WASC has been working to train student leaders statewide so they can go into secondary school classrooms and present the message and materials of the Student-2-Student Engagement Project. Trained student leaders will work with adults at their schools to mentor ninth-graders and teach a two-period lesson about why school matters and how to make the new requirements relevant to their lives. We hope that by the end of the year, all 85,000 freshmen in Washington will have experienced the program. This effort has significantly bolstered the visibility and status of the WASC board within Washington state and, more important, has brought students to the forefront of their educational choices and direction.

My high school, Mountain View High School in Vancouver (Evergreen 114 School District), was the first school in the state to pilot the program. Dolly Nguyen, the WASC board secretary, helped me present the program to two freshman classes. It was amazing how receptive the ninth-graders were. Even the few students who were skeptical the first day came back the second day with a positive attitude, eager to learn and impress us since we were, in fact, seniors. By the time we had completed the lesson plan, there were 60 ninth-graders who were experts on the graduation requirements. More important, there were 60 students who now understand how they can use their four years in high school to help them prepare for their future. They have begun to understand that no matter what they want to do after high school, whether it be going to college, joining the military, or entering a vocational field, they could still make high school relevant to their lives. There is no reason to waste four years sitting behind a desk and earning a diploma that is meaningless to them. Furthermore, they understand that wasting four years isn’t a viable alternative to earning a diploma, because, for the first time, students in the class of 2008 will be held accountable for their learning. They will actually have to show competency on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning exam in areas of mathematics, reading, and writing. There will no longer be an easy way to earn a diploma. The Student-2-Student Engagement Project helps freshmen realize this before it is too late. It gets ninth-graders thinking about their future. This is something I know some seniors at my high school have still not done.

I know this project will help students statewide do better in school and will help focus their thoughts on the future. I strongly believe that students must understand the purpose behind educational reform and the resources available to them in school in order to become fully engaged in their own education. Although students are the driving force behind this project, they will need everyone’s support for it to be successful and fully effective.