I can’t say that school is an enjoyable thing for everyone, including myself, but I can say that there are things at school we should be thankful for, even when we don’t have the most positive attitude on a Monday morning to notice. Let’s start from the time when you get up in the morning to when the last bell rings to dismiss us for the day.

Every day, there is a bus driver who wakes up early to pick us up. Even if you don’t ride a bus, the bus driver still comes around to offer a free ride to school every day. That’s free transportation right there. Once you get to school, there are five principals who are ready to start a new day with us, whether it’s just throwing a smile at us, giving us words of encouragement through the announcements or even just giving us a fist bump as we walk through the doors. Then, you have about 1700 other students of different races and backgrounds to socialize with, while other schools can’t say the same. Our school has the honor of having a huge amount of diversity in our student body because being different is good.

Next, you have teachers, one of the main components of school. As soon as you walk into your first block class, you have someone who is willing to teach you and do whatever it takes for you to succeed. A teacher’s salary isn’t the highest thing in the world, but based on the ways our teachers are here at HHS, that’s one of the last things they worry about at the end of the day. We walk into class everyday, and we don’t notice the little things our teachers do for us. We don’t know how many hours they spent grading the papers we didn’t try on, or how they could’ve had a whole lesson planned out that we never completed because the class was talking. Teachers play a big role in our lives, and it’s something we shouldn’t take for granted, but instead be thankful for.

If it’s anything we can all agree on here, it’s that school lunches aren’t always the best, but at least they’re something. We have six lines to choose from for lunch every day with different options. Our lunch ladies make so many meals for us every day, and we should be thankful for that. HHS also has a high percentage in free or reduced lunch, which means our lunch ladies are cooking meals every day that aren’t being paid for. Shouldn’t we be thankful for that?

Last of all, we have the classes and clubs we should be thankful for. Our school has a wide variety of classes, clubs and different opportunities to choose from, and once again, most schools can’t say the same. We even have an Academic Academy after school every week to help students in their classes. That’s basically an extra couple of hours teachers stay at the school to help us.

By the end of the day, there are still many more reasons to be thankful in our school. Even the hallways. Have you ever stopped to notice how clean they were? We have custodians who work late in the evenings just so we can have a clean floor to walk on the next day. It’s the little things that we don’t notice that we should be thankful for. School can definitely be a hassle for students, but it’s also something that has given us so much, enough for us to be thankful for.