Metro pages tell of good, bad, best staff

By Tyler Irons

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When I first came to Metro, I thought it was going to be like an all-day detention center. All the intimidating and far-fetched things people told me about the school made me feel like I wasn't going to enjoy it at all.

In reality, Metro is like a blank-paged hardcover book, and every separate page is a different color and size. From the outside, it just looks like a hard, unwelcoming place, but once you open it and experience it yourself, you see all the different stories and how colorful and diverse it is. But even with the wide range of colors, every page in the book belongs.

Sure there are a couple of tears here and there, a couple of wrinkled pages, but the book as a whole always stays tightly bound between the hard covers.

At Metro, I have learned that the staff genuinely cares about the students and wants what is best for the kids overall. I've learned that all students at Metro have their own story, their own page in the book. I'm not really learning that I have potential to do anything I desire, as much as I am realizing that I have that potential.

That being said, I would encourage new students to chase your dreams and let the staff help you along the way. The teachers aren't there just to get you through classes like in other schools. They are there to help you set up your future, and help you overcome adversity and obstacles that you may run into along the way. I'm encouraging you to let the staff help you, because if you're like me, nobody outside of school has the ability to help you the way Metro will.

I hope staff at Metro remembers me not just as a student, but as a person who wrote two pages in the book.

The first page full of self-envisioned basketball success, loose cannon attitude and classroom failure. A page with half-finished sentences, bad punctuation and ink smudges all over the place. With bent corners, torn edges and slowly tearing away from the binding.

While the second page consists of actual basketball success, positive controlled attitude and more than enough achievements in the classroom. I want them to remember me as a page that is neatly organized with perfect punctuation, no bent corners and no tears.

A page with a little piece of tape holding it to the binding of the book, so that I'll never forget where I came from and what I've been through. I want teachers to remember me as somebody they watched come through the front doors as a kid and walk out as a man.

The only worry I have at this time in my life is how I'm going to tell the teachers exactly how much they've changed my life. In a way, they saved my life. They saved me from becoming another statistic in my town from my neighborhood.

If I sat down with the whole staff and talked for two hours straight. I still wouldn't be able to express myself in a way that completely explains how I feel about Metro. The only way I can express my feelings is by simply saying ... thank you.

Tyler Irons is a student at Metro High School, the Cedar Rapids Community School District's alternative high school. Comments: tyirons@gmail.com