Angela Tonn on Hope for the Future

My name is Angela Tonn, and I am a public high school teacher. I teach biology and AP biology. Of the kids, like they get the idea of climate change better than you'd think they get it. It's not a hard sell for them. They're like, Oh, that makes sense. And yet adults act like this is something we just cannot possibly wrap our heads around. It gives me hope that they get it. They don't see it as a choice between, Oh, we're all gonna like live in a cave again or we're going, you know, it's like, no, no, no, they, they get interpersonal things. They are so much less... I mean, yes, racism exists in the younger people. Sexism exists, homophobia exists, but not at the level it does in adults. They're much more, uh, open. Um, their desire for change makes me very happy. It's fun to listen to them. And they're like, they, they want a better world. And they're a little bit like tick tock so these things give me hope.

And like I said, some of the experience from this, this COVID weirdness that gives me some hope is I hear. Maybe it's because we're, so we're all so starved for like interaction with people that maybe some of us are really starting to examine our privilege. Our Our places where we fall short, because we all do. do. Maybe we will really stop and go, wow. Why was it when all this went nuts, the only place I could turn for community help was a public school? Like yes of course, we should be helping, but food insecurity? Public school. Bullying, suicide prevention? Public school. Daycare? Public school. Maybe we'll get that notion of like, yes, the community, the local governments, federal government needs to do more. So those things make me very hopeful. The thing I get from my students mostly is they want to be part of a solution. solution. They do see the problems, they, they certainly understand, xenophobia and they certainly understand racism and they certainly understand, discrimination against lower income people and the way that plays out dumb is the last thing we got to worry about. But this notion that they want to, they want to solve it. I kind of dig that.