After California’s District 17 congressman Ro Khanna’s campaign came to an end last November, a couple of student volunteers, including senior Anisha Kollareddy, decided to use the leftover energy to launch a new organization that aimed to help improve the surrounding community through a series of high-impact projects: Agents of Change.
According to Kollareddy, the organization focuses on community service, including teaching academic and learning skills in low-income neighborhoods. They teach lessons like public speaking and biology to children, hoping to make impactful progress in the Bay Area. This last month, Agents of Change teamed up with XQ Super School, an organization dedicated to revolutionizing the education system to adapt to the 21st century.
“Education hasn’t changed in the past 100 years even though our society and technology [have] drastically advanced,” Kollareddy said.
Agents of Change decided to take part of XQ Super School’s social media campaign by posting under the hashtag #thanksforteachingme on Facebook. The hashtag, according to senior Michael Wu, a chair for the organization’s economic opportunity committees, is to raise awareness for teacher appreciation and to show gratitude for the impact they’ve had on their learning experience. According to Kollareddy, it would take them one step closer to restructuring classes for the modern age. Wu chose to honor physics teacher Jim Birdsong for his unique personality.
“His words have a little bit of sting to them where if you don’t really understand his humor, it might come out as condescending, [but] he’s really there to try and help you because he understands that the course is very difficult,” Wu said. “Adding on top of that his personality, it just makes his class really enjoyable.”
Senior Hasini Shyamsundar, another agent of change, also decided to post about chemistry teacher Kavita Gupta because of her kindness and her attention to students’ mental health.
“A lot of days when things were getting really stressful, especially near AP testing, she would stop the class and ask us how we’re doing [to] make sure that our mental health was okay,” Shyamsundar said. “She was really there for us, not just as a teacher but as a person who really cares about who you are as a person.”
Even though the campaign’s overall goal was to bring awareness to integrating STEM into classrooms, Wu says that the hashtag is for all teachers, regardless of what they teach. He and Kollareddy also note that the hashtag raised a lot of questions about why they were posting teacher appreciation.
“People make it a much more special occasion than it actually is because it happens so [infrequently],” Wu said. “That’s one thing that we kind of wanted to bring awareness to and change.”
Regardless of the response to the hashtag, all three feel good to know that they’re contributing to and driving the progress. The organization believes that spreading teacher appreciation is the first step to evolving the education process to better accommodate science and technology.
“It feels good to know you’re making an impact and we should spread that love,” Kollareddy said.