It’s not easy being me but I am able to love who I am at my school, Seven Pillars Career Academy. It’s because of a phenomenal Black woman, Christina Guillen, our school founder that I can learn to be a leader making a global impact.
I am a 7th grade scholar at 7 Pillars and I absolutely love my school for several reasons.
My school environment is very accepting. It reinforces how we should be accepting of others. The school reinforces that no one regardless of who we are should be discriminated against in any way.
We have the BEST principal. She is extremely understanding.
She understands that as middle school scholars we go through a lot.
Ms. Guillen really gets that we are still trying to figure out who we are while balancing academics, family, social life along with extracurricular activities.
I mean come on, think about your own teenage years or those you saw on TV. It’s fun, yes but not easy.
7 Pillars also appeals to me because it teaches us things in a nontraditional way unlike other schools. Apart from the traditional curriculum, we are taught life lessons.
The skills we learn are things we can actually apply to everyday life. The lessons taught are on information we need to learn in order to advance and be successful now.
We aren’t just simply focused on our future.
Moreover, the school ensures that we are not being played when we enter the real world.
Another reason I absolutely love my school is because I get along very well with all my teachers.
I have great respect for each and every one of them.
Some of my teachers I met for the first time this year but we were able to hit it off right away. The teachers see us!
They learn our personalities and adjust or change their teaching styles to maximize our full potential.
At the same time they are accepting of the fact that each scholar learns in different ways.
All of these excellent qualities are just a few of the things I love about my school. I could not be happier to be a scholar at 7 Pillars Career Academy.
T-Yerah Hanley is a seventh grade scholar at Seven Pillars Career Academy, Clayton County, Georgia.
Jason has worked in education for over 15 years as a teacher, blogger and community advocate. He speaks and writes primarily about the need to improve education for Black boys, particularly increasing the number of Black male educators in schools. In addition to blogging here at EdLanta, Jason is also a featured writer at Education Post.