• Coming Home to Harlem

  by Kayla Ruano-Lumpris

  Names have been changed. It was 6th grade recess, and a couple of girls were complaining about how far away they lived from school. I stared off into space, kicking at the fake grass beneath my feet, hoping they wouldn’t ask me where I lived.

• What NYC Teens Actually Think About the SHSAT

  by Merry Li

  In June 2018, I began to hear news about then-Mayor Bill de Blasio wanting to do away with the Standardized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT), the exam New York City students take to get into one of eight specialized high schools.

• Wondering About Where I Fit In

  by Etana Williams

  For the first six years of my life, I grew up on the island of Trinidad. I spoke with an accent, pronouncing three as “tree.” I ate Carribean food like roti, aloo pies, and pelau. I was accustomed to drinking water straight out of a coconut, eating mangoes from my grandfather’s mango tree, encounters with snakes and lizards, and seeing houses in every color of the rainbow.

• How I Fight Racism Both in the World and Within Me

  by Eli Elvin

  Before George Floyd’s murder, I didn’t focus much on racism I’d experienced. But Mr. Floyd was just a normal Black man trying to get through another day in his life, just like my father, my uncle, or my older cousins. That infuriated me enough to see that I couldn’t ignore any more of the microaggressions I often faced in my own life.

• Stereotyped Into Silence No More

  by Kaylee Pierre

  In 2nd grade, my White teacher wrote on the dry erase board: “character traits/adjectives.” “Who knows an example of a way you can describe a character?” she said, her voice barely reaching the back of the room. The room remained quiet.

• Confronting the Unruly Black Student Stereotype

  by Dominique De Castro

  Four years ago, about a week after Hurricane Irma hit my home in Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands, my mother, two younger siblings, and I were evacuated via helicopter to Puerto Rico. From there, we traveled to New York, where we joined my grandparents for good.