I WATCHED the State of the Nation Address the way many students do now: half-listening, half-scrolling, trying to catch a line that feels like it was written for us. Every year, there are numbers, promises, applause. Every year, I wait for a sentence that sounds like my classroom.
It rarely comes.
We are told about growth, about infrastructure, about digital futures. But in my school, growth looks like forty, fifty, sometimes sixty students sharing one room. It looks like chairs borrowed from other classes, electric fans that barely move the heat, and teachers who stretch themselves thin just to keep everyone seen. A classroom shortage is not an abstract figure. It is a daily negotiation of space, attention, and dignity.
We are told about safety and order. But in our corridors, violence is quieter and closer. Bullying is not always viral. It is a whisper, a shove, a group chat you are not part of. It is the slow shrinking of a student who used to speak. When incidents do surface, they are treated as isolated, as if they do not grow from the same soil of neglect. Guidance offices are understaffed. Mental health support is still a privilege in many schools. We learn early how to endure instead of how to be protected.
We are told that education is a priority. But our school year is constantly interrupted by things we are expected to simply accept. Floods cancel classes. Heat waves make classrooms unsafe. Typhoons tear through roofs and routines. Each time, learning is paused, then rushed, then measured by the same exams as if nothing happened. We are told to be resilient. We are rarely given the conditions that make resilience fair.
There are programs, yes. There are pilots, partnerships, announcements. But from where we sit, they feel distant, like solutions designed for reports rather than for rooms like ours. The language of policy often misses the language of students. We do not speak in acronyms. We speak in missed lessons, in crowded desks, in the anxiety of falling behind.
What is missing is not just funding, though that matters. It is focus. It is the clarity to say that a nation cannot claim progress while its students are learning in conditions that make learning harder than it should be. It is the urgency to treat classrooms as the front line, not the afterthought.
If the SONA is a mirror, then it should reflect us too. Not as a demographic, not as a statistic, but as voices. We want to hear commitments that are specific and measurable. Build more classrooms and tell us where, how many, and when they will be finished. Hire more teachers and show us how you will support them so they can stay. Put real systems in place to prevent and respond to bullying, with trained counselors and clear accountability. Make disaster-ready schools a standard, not a slogan, so learning does not collapse every time the weather turns.
We are not asking for perfection. We are asking for honesty that matches our own. We know the country is complicated. We live that complexity every day. But we also know what it feels like to be overlooked, and we can tell when we are being spoken about instead of spoken to.
The SONA ends, the applause fades, and we return to our classrooms. The question that follows us is simple: will anything be different tomorrow?
For many of us, the answer has been no for too long. We are ready for a different answer. Not in words, but in the rooms where we learn, in the safety we feel, and in the time we are given to become who we are trying to be.
Unless these problems are addressed, we won’t be seated.
How can we be ready and all in, when the system still hasn’t shown up for us?
- Abby Cruz
