VOICE & AGENCY | CLIPBOARD

Sources:
[1] “Forty-Three Valedictorians: Graduates of The Met Talk about Their Learning” by Adria Steinberg (Brown Lab, 2000)
[2] Learning Journeys and The Learning Cycle (Met videos, 2000)
[3] One Kid at a Time by Eliot Levine (Teachers College Press, 2002).

On speaking in public

Maya: Everybody here goes on job shadows and informational interviews to see if they want internships there. Last year I was so afraid to talk with people, to sit there and like talk. Now I’ve been to three or four informational interviews. I interviewed them, and it’s like helping me out. I speak well in front of people now. [1]]

Leah: When I came to this school, I didn’t know anyone, so I was all shy... I never liked to speak in front of any people. I started with a Pick-Me-Up (a morning meeting ritual at The Met), and then I went to Florida. We spoke a little bit in front of 30 people, then we had a table, and people would come, and then we had to talk with them. [1]]

Zoe: My LTI is at the Urban League of Rhode Island, and what I do there is I go around and I talk to schools twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday, about tobacco prevention. And currently I have been talking to the students at B.J. Clinton School, and today I went to my old school, Community Prep, and talked to the eighth graders there. [1]]

Nadia: I started out my first year here as a person whose talkativeness sometimes got me in trouble. By the end of the year, I saw that my talent for words could help me personally but also advance causes I believe in. My LTI gave me lots of chances to practice presenting in public. I had to describe to my team the results of the teen survey I’d conducted. I presented at a meeting in Washington about incorporating community service into school. I started to think more and more about what is involved, like that a pubic speaker should not be reading from note cards.

Recently I attended an open conference [in Providence] on AIDS and other issues. I decided to step up to the microphone. I spoke there, too, because I also felt very strongly about people that have the power, have the money to do something [but] just sit there and talk about it and they don’t go out actually in their communities... That was something I thought that would be good to say there. Also to encourage teens to do that, too, because many of us could do a lot, but we’re not encouraged to. We feel like we’re not useful for anything... So that’s why I talked about it... We need to speak out about it. We need to be encouraged to do that, because we don’t think we could. [1]

Juan (testifying to the Rhode Island House Committee on Finance, Subcommittee on Elementary & Secondary Education): My name’s Juan Huertas, I’m a senior, and first and foremost I want to say it’s good to be back here. I was here in the eighth grade, you know, supporting The Met, and I’m here now supporting it again. You all had mentioned something about going on trips—I just want to say that I, too, was a part of Summer Search. I did an Outward Bound course. I went to Dominican Republic to do community service, and I built a house for a poor family, and I built a school for 800 future students. [2]

On feeling one’s power

Sando: Well I didn’t really have anything that I thought I was good at in school, except for sports, and I didn’t really have any goals for work or anything. I took a class in children ’s literature (at a local college). I wanted to be independent, wanted to go on my own and do something that I knew would give me a challenge, because I’m not used to doing work like that. And I love children, and that’s what pushed me into that. So I took this class, and it came out really good. My tests were pretty good and at the end of the class you had to write your own book. And so I did that, and it came out really good. I never did anything like that before, and it was just crazy! Boom! I found my passion then. That was when I first managed to find out what I was good at. [1]

Maya: I’m surprised that I’ve gotten this far. It was back and forth, whether I didn’t want to go to college or maybe I should. But I’m so engaged that I really want to work my butt off for the next four years again and do the same cycle and get somewhere after that. [1]

Juan: I didn’t want to go to college when I came here in 9th grade. I just wanted to go straight to the Marines. I mean, the thought still comes into my mind, you know? Now it’s like, I want to go to college, to be a song producer, I want to be a writer, a cook, I want to be everything! I want to be Mayor! Yeah, Mayor! That’s where I’m at now. [2]

On persevering

Elliot (advisor): I just tell students that they’re not dropping out. Deirdre’s mom says, “Well, it’s up to her. If she wants to leave, she can leave.” And I say “No, she can’t! If you talk like that, she’ll think she can do anything she wants.” Her plan was to go down to Florida and hook up with some older guy or some crazy thing. She’s 17 years old! So I told her “You can’t drop out. I won’t sign the papers. You think you’ll get a GED and go to college, but within two months you’ll be pregnant and he’ll dump you. Then no one will rent you an apartment, and you’ll be living on the street. So you’re not leaving. You’re just not leaving.” And it worked. She stayed. Sometimes you have to do something desperate like that. By delaying her a few days, we bought her the time she needed to change her mind. [3]

Maya: I’m proud of myself for coming a long way in these four years, maturing and all that. I’m proud of my senior class for being the first class to ever graduate from The Met, and I also want to be proud of the next class coming up. I know a lot of the 11th graders—when they heard me say that their eyes just opened up a little bit, like yeah, I’m going to make it, too. That’s what I really wanted—for them to hang in there. The Met is sort of like changing the path for them. [1]

>>Return to the Introduction to The MET