Advocating and speaking out on topics and critical issues is always tough to do as a teenager. You don’t feel like you have any control. You may even feel like people overlook you. But, while this may be easy to say, no one is more powerful than a young voice. We speak a different truth, and as the future, we matter most.
Last year, I transferred from a Perspectives Charter School to the Noble Academy as a junior in high school. I didn’t expect much except to be in a learning environment that would support me until I made it to college. Unfortunately, during the time I transferred to the school, it had been facing principal changes that altered the culture of the school and the Noble Network, the organization that runs all 17 Noble schools. Knowing this, I tried my best to succeed in the learning environment even though it was not preferable.
Things were never easy. I remember constantly having conversations with teachers about the policy/rule changes, the new culture of the school, and the comfort of the learning space. The conversations were evident that there was a significant issue with the school but no one, students or teachers, ever felt they could do anything to fix the way things were.
I vividly remember my AP Language and Composition teacher, Mr. Schafft, interrupting planned lessons to have deep Harkness-structured conversations to talk about blatant problems and how the student body could potentially solve them. But, as heartfelt and concerning as these conversations were, we still thought that deep down, whatever we tried to do as students, one, wouldn’t be taken seriously, and two, would never be long lasting.
These problems continued throughout the rest of the school year and into this school year.
Now, I’m a senior, and the same problems have stayed consistent, and new troubles are mounting.
During this school year, I, along with the student body and members of the school staff, struggle daily with an inefficient disciplinary structure that has negatively affected the entire landscape of our learning environment and has put many in a presumptively unsuccessful position as we prepare for college. We’ve struggled with policies being implemented to target a specific affinity group — African-Americans males — and also, which is the most detrimental to our learning, being taught by teachers who are not competent to teach.
So, Monday, Oct. 3, I, along with Ciara Haynes (12th grader), Tobias Gillespie (12th grader), Angel Ramierez (12th grader), Isai Villanueva (12th grader), and Romiyah Ratliff (11th grader) led the student body of the Noble Academy in a protest and have remained the representatives and student leaders to force change to occur within our school.
The protest was the initial step in what we expected to be a long process to enact change. This was our way of gaining everyone’s attention so that we could move toward a conversation about the logistics of the school.
And it worked.