Summary Of My Lazy American Students By Kara Miller

In her essay, “My Lazy American Students”, Kara Miller describes her experiences teaching. Miller goes on to briefly explain two incidents with two different American students. In both situations each student was doing poor in class and had inquired about achieving a higher grade. In the first incident she discusses how there had been no change in the student’s work ethic after receiving help and guidance. Miller also mentions the international students she had taught throughout the years; these students also take advantage of every opportunity they are presented with unlike the American students. Miller uses these anecdotes as evidence to back up her claim that American students are in fact “lazy”. Although many believe American students are “lazy”, the majority of students do their best with their work even though many adults do not see it that way.

For the majority of students they have high expectations set up by parents and occasionally staff members from the school they are attending. Almost every single student in that situation has not only strived to meet those expectations, but they have also experienced the expectations from a young age. This is a very stressful situation for a student to be in. The stress of having to meet these very high set expectations leads to lack of sleep and a lack in performance. Students do have a tendency to try their best, but due to the little sleep they get their performance is not what one would expect. Not only does this lead to a decline in their performance, it also has a tendency to lead to breakdowns. Occasionally the stress and lack of sleep gets to be too much for a student to handle which leads to a breakdown where nothing gets done. Hence a student being seen as lazy to older