I stumbled upon this while deleting pictures. I paused. It’s not the first such note I ever confiscated, and almost certainly not the last. As we keep trying to create assembly-line models of education, though, I think we should take a moment to remember what it feels like to be thirteen.

Middle schools and high schools are filled with adolescents whose brains are sometimes frozen, mental stutters, wholly stuck on a kid sitting across the room — and oblivious to the woman talking in front of the whiteboard.

These are adolescents.

And they need more than an endless stream of math and English factoids that are expected to be part of the latest year’s spring test. They need adults to understand that children and adolescents are not small versions of adults. Small humans are not simply humans who know fewer facts. They do not struggle to make sound choices because of lack of data.

They struggle because their brains and bodies are changing so rapidly that confusion is often where they live, not merely a way station on the way to adulthood.