Advice Alley

“How can I focus on my class work and not be distracted –  or absolutely screamed at by my teacher?”-  Anonymous.

Hello! This must be very difficult to deal with and I’m sorry it’s happening. What always helps me is just using some music and turning it up when you have time to work alone. Spotify is great to listen to on your Chromebook because it isn’t blocked. You could also try to talk to your teacher or a counselor about the screaming. Most teachers are happy to figure out a way to help improve students’ ability to focus. One quick fix is changing seats around. It may seem difficult to confront the teacher but sometimes you need to talk about your needs if you can’t get your work done. I hope you can concentrate better.

“I’m editing a classmate’s writing project for my English class. How do I respectfully tell them that it’s not very good, to the point that I suggest they redo it all over again.” -Anonymous. 

It can be hard telling someone your feelings when it’s not positive, but you could try and find one or two things that are good in the article and tell them those are good aspects of the story and let them down easily. You could start off with something positive by saying “Hey, I like this and this in your article” and then move on to “maybe you could improve on these paragraphs” and provide an example or two?” Could you consider posing your critique as a question, (much like I’m doing now)? Try not to be too aggressive though because you don’t want to hurt their feelings, good luck!

“Where can I get yearbooks?”- Anonymous.

You can order your yearbook at the Brier Terrace middle school website under families and then payments and then fill out the information, thank you! Tell your friends to order one, too!

“When I made a sandwich to bring for lunch, I put it in a plastic bag and the condensation from my lettuce and tomato made the bread soggy. How do I fix this?” – Anonymous.

This is an easy fix. I used to struggle with this too and it grossed me out but what I did was put the lettuce and tomato in a different bag then my bread and then it won’t get soggy. Enjoy your sandwich!

“In some of my classes, the students are very loud. It makes it extremely difficult to focus on my work. What should I do?” –Anonymous. 

Hi I got a question similar to this. Some options you could do are listen to music or ask your teacher to work in the hall or in the library, hope this helps.

“How do I know if my friends like me for who I am?”- Anonymous. 

Thank you for asking and other kids have issues with this too. If your friends don’t like you for who you are, then they aren’t your friends. You should try and talk to them before doing anything drastic like stop being friends with them. And definitely don’t do anything drastic or dangerous to impress them just so they like you! I bet you’re a good friend but I’m not licensed as a therapist (yet!) so you could also try talking to one of the school counselors about this too, sorry if this isn’t the best help and I hope you feel better soon.

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