J'Dan Jordan
SCHOOL: Coliseum College Prep Academy
PILLAR: Quality Teachers and Teaching
ARTIST STATEMENT
I've selected the Quality Teachers and Teaching pillar to share an experience millions of other kids, and I have gone through. A common issue I see online is that students go undiagnosed with depression and don't even know they have it. I have not gotten a diagnosis and am “suspected for depression.” During my sophomore and junior year of high school, I was severely depressed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and I wrote a poem about a student having depression in the American schooling system. “I wake up” is a repetition phrase I use because of how I felt waking up every day. Tired, exhausted, and frustrated with myself. Flunking classes and sleeping in bed when I should be in class. All things that I couldn't control. In this poem, the teacher is supposed to represent the past teachers I've had. Ones that gave me a test I hadn't done the homework to, ones that would lie to my face and say, “It's okay,” and ones that had no choice but to fail me in their class. “Yet you expect me to return,” is supposed to represent summer school and how it's seen as an agonizing and terrible time for students. Punishing students and relinquishing their breaks from them because of uncontrollable circumstances is not how teaching should ever be. There needs to be a rework. Schools and their teachers need to be better--acknowledge the student's problems, and have empathy.
