Episode 27: An Open Letter to My High School Administration (1/14/2021)

Hey y’all. Welcome to Fast Facts for Gen Z. I’m your host, Callie, and I don’t know anything about anything. Come with me on my exploration of the world, and I’ll tell you everything you ever, and never, wanted to know, through the eyes of Gen Z.

Today, I would like to take a break from our normally scheduled programming and accept, just for a week, that I do, in fact, know some things. This week, I’m sending an open letter to my high school’s administration on the topic of teen mental health.

Before we begin, I need to address something. You will probably feel uncomfortable at some point, or maybe several points, over the course of this letter. I encourage you to continue anyway. It is always uncomfortable to be told that we are wrong, however slightly. But if we cannot confront that discomfort and sit with it, then we will never grow. Please, grow with me.

Dear administration,

My name is Callie. I am eighteen years old, and am a senior at your high school. Some of you may know me already, for various reasons, and others may not. I believe I have been somewhat of a thorn in your side for the past year or so, maybe more, but for that I will not apologize. I hope you can see my reasons.

This year, I was selected as a member of our high school’s Teen Mental Health Team. This is a county-wide endeavor, with a team and an advisor at every school. Our goal is to decrease the stigma surrounding mental health and increase student support. Sounds good, right?

Sure. I thought so too, when it was first proposed. I thought it was a great idea. For years, a major problem with the counseling department’s activities was lack of student input and interest, and I thought that this was the school’s way of reaching out to get student voices. My assumption is that you think that student voices have always been here, you just haven’t been accessing them. I assume that you think that if you just reached out and asked students what they think you could be doing better, they will tell you, and everything will be fine and dandy.

As I hope we all know, reality is a lot more complicated. Student voices aren’t just here, ready for the taking. They’re harder to reach than that. Some have been intentionally silenced by overbearing parents, teachers, or the societal pressures that tell children to sit down, shut up, your feelings don’t matter, and your ideas are stupid. Some have been buried accidentally, overwhelmed by school, extracurriculars, homework, social norms, friend groups, and the ever-growing push to do more, be more, why aren’t you enough? Overwhelmed by action and expectation, our thoughts and voices have to get pushed to the backburner, or we won’t survive. So when you ask us to advocate for ourselves, it’s a lot harder than just asking, “what can we do better?”

In February 2020, students started to be told about this idea that the county had about a Teen Mental Health Team. I was called out of class one day, sent to a person’s office who I had never met before, and told that I had been nominated to be a part of this team. They said it would look great on a college application. They said the school wanted to hear my voice. I said, “cool!” They said they’d be in touch later, and then I went back to class.

And then I promptly forgot about it. Why? Because I was knee-deep in a play for charity, taking five classes in a four-class day, and I had been talked at about it for exactly three minutes one afternoon in February.

So imagine my surprise one day in May, after COVID had hit, when I got an email asking me to fill out some personal information, write about why I wanted to be a member of this team, and offer a bunch of suggestions for what the school could do during Mental Health Month. Mental Health Month is May. I never asked to be a member of the team. But, like the dutiful little student I am, I filled out my form and sent it off to the abyss, and promptly forgot about it again. It had been three months! I hardly knew what I was supposed to be signing up for. But okay, you got me. You’ve made a team, whatever that means.

When school started back up this fall, the Teen Mental Health Team met for the first time. There are five of us, plus one counselor acting as our advisor. I thought, “this is amazing!” I had come up with a lot of ideas over the summer, hoping that this would actually be a real thing. I thought, “the school actually cares about our voices!” I thought, “this counselor is our pathway in!”

But I was too hopeful, wasn’t I? I should have known to be a bit more distrustful of the system that had been built for me, but without any input from me. I will admit that I started off with a grudge against the counselor who became our advisor. She’s not mine, but she was my best friend’s counselor when he was still in high school. She looked at this skinny kid with ADHD and saw that the only class he was regularly passing was theater, and she had the audacity to tell him that theater wasn’t a real career and he needed to plan for computer science, something he hated. I’ll give you an update on him, actually. He ended up at a college that he hates, majoring in computer science. He was miserable. He got reckless. He got COVID. His theater teacher saw his talent and told him to switch his major to theater. He did. Now, he’s doing a lot better. The other reason I held a grudge against her was that she gave my English class last year two identical presentations about time management, promising that all our mental health problems would disappear and we’d never have anxiety again if we only learned how to use a planner and a calendar. Needless to say, when I saw that she was the one leading the team to advocate for mental health, I was less than excited.

Still, she seemed enthusiastic, and it wasn’t like I could have done anything about it, so I had to roll with it. So we have this team, and we have this advisor who is supposedly our way into the structure of power so that we can start affecting things in ways that will make things better. And… now what? This, administration, counseling department, whoever was in charge of this, is one misstep. You gathered these five teenagers who don’t know each other into a Google Meeting, gave them a guidance counselor who they also don’t know, and said, “do you have any ideas?” No. No. We don’t have any ideas. What are we having ideas about? How do we know you will listen to us? How do we know our ideas are good? What happens if our ideas are bad? What if I don’t have any ideas? What happens if our ideas are good and then they ask us to have more ideas and those are bad? The insecurities start to fly, because we’ve never been asked for our ideas before, and how are we supposed to know what to do?

I know this might be starting to sound a little contradictory, because aren’t I advocating for myself right now? Aren’t I having ideas? Well, sure. But I’m having them on my podcast, which is a platform that I created for myself and that I have complete control over. In my mind, nothing can hurt me here. You might be thinking, “Hurt you? We would never hurt you.” But I don’t know that. I’ve seen schools crush people’s souls. I’ve been yelled at and told I would fail a class for something as simple as choosing not to complete an optional extra credit project. I’ve seen entire classes be shamed for doing poorly on a quiz as if it was somehow their fault that the entire class didn’t understand. In middle school, I tearfully reported a boy for sexually harassing me, terrified that I wouldn’t be believed, and watched him walk back into class like nothing had happened. The next year, he was in two of my classes, and none of the teachers even knew. So when I was suddenly told I had a voice and a platform, and asked what could be done to support me, it’s not that I don’t have ideas, it’s that I don’t even know where to start.

The Mental Health Team was given a day of training and then given the task of coming up with a plan for the year. We wanted to make an introductory video, and we wanted a survey to see what might be helpful to other students. We also wanted to give a presentation to the staff about mental health and supporting students, because we know that the efforts of the counseling department are meaningless if the teachers aren’t on the same page. I hope you know that as well. I don’t think you do, because they clearly aren’t on the same page, but you know, I can hope. We wanted to do more things too, but we haven’t gotten there yet.

The introductory video was a success, I think. I’m not sure about the survey, which brings me to another failing of the organization of the Mental Health Team. This team is part of a structure that I did not help build, therefore I have no real say in how it runs. It’s an opportunity to use my voice, but even then, my voice is controlled and limited. The students have no say in when meetings are, how often they occur, or how long they are scheduled for. Because of this, the guidance counselor has accidentally scheduled meetings for during class time, or on the exact minute that a class ends, which is honestly quite stressful.

I have other after-school obligations that I worry about having to cancel or reschedule if the counselor schedules a meeting at an inconvenient time. Our most recent meeting was scheduled the day before, and the counselor was fifteen minutes late because she scheduled it to start at the exact minute that her previous obligation was supposed to end, and it went long. Only three out of the five students showed up, despite everyone saying they would come. One left before the counselor arrived. Sure, it only happened one time, and I’m sure it wasn’t her fault, but I felt as though my time had been disrespected. Especially considering the topic of the meeting.

Today’s meeting, and I’m writing this on Tuesday, was scheduled so quickly because yesterday, we were told by the administration that we were scheduled to give our presentation to the faculty on Friday. We would have twenty minutes. Now, please know that the team has not created a presentation yet because we have been asking for this time slot since November and students know very well that circumstances can change quickly. A presentation on mental health support would be very different in November than it would be in January. So, the team of five had three days to come up with a presentation that included all of us, despite the fact that only two of the five attended the meeting, one can’t attend on Friday, and our advisor, who was supposed to be telling us all of this, was fifteen minutes late to a half-hour meeting. And it’s exam week. I have one exam on Thursday, and the other student who was in the meeting has an exam on Wednesday and Friday. This, too, made me feel like my time had been disrespected.

It’s a sort of bitter irony, isn’t it? The presentation from the Teen Mental Health Team was scheduled with no regard for the mental health of the teens on the team. You cherry-picked us for our responsibility, our good reputations, and presumably our good grades, and then you treat us as if we’re not worthy of attention and force us to pick our responsibilities and make sacrifices for our grades in the name of your convenience. You will listen to or read this and think, “this wasn’t my intent. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t think about it.” No. No you didn’t think about it. Because you aren’t used to thinking about making space for us.

Which is exactly what this is trying to solve, right? It upsets me. It upsets me that you said, “hey, let’s hear student voices” and then completely disregarded those voices. The problem you face with getting student input is caused by the fact that you don’t make space for it. Twenty minutes at a faculty meeting is nothing. This podcast is longer than that, and I would be sharing it with four other students and the guidance counselor. You might wonder why I’m not sending this in a direct email, or in conversation, instead of this broader medium, and it’s because there simply isn’t space. So I have to make my own.

My English class is the best class I’m taking right now because my teacher makes space for regular reflection. She makes space for feedback. She makes space for us to feel heard, and she makes me believe that she’s listening. The administration does not. I have had to fight for space.

As you hopefully know, I reached out to you recently about supporting teachers in this time and respecting their need to preserve their health above all else. Sending that email was one of the scariest things I have ever done, for a lot of reasons. It was… not particularly nice. I tried to be polite, but I also really didn’t want to be. I’m supposed to be polite to authority figures, right? Say yes ma’am and yes sir, shake hands, keep quiet, don’t cause problems. I’m especially supposed to be polite to men in authority. Smile, you’ll look prettier. Don’t contradict him. A man needs to feel like a man. So it was scary to reject that concept of “politeness” and unapologetically advocate, unapologetically take up space. And then, in response, the principal wanted me to call him. On the phone.

Call him??? On the phone??? Sir I am Gen Z, I am absolutely petrified of phone calls. Especially phone calls with men in authority to whom I have just sent a long and scathing email. I cried. He knew, he had to know. I didn’t say anything important. He wasn’t mad, he just wanted to explain himself, but my voice retreated back into hiding, back into protection so it wouldn’t be hurt. I apologized for being not particularly nice. He said it was okay. I didn’t believe him. I had used my voice and taken up space in the email, but then when given the opportunity to speak with an authority figure, I regressed straight back into Don’t Cause Problems, Don’t Take Up Space, Don’t Make Him Mad. Which is why I’m saying all of this here, in my space, where I feel safe, as opposed to in an email or conversation, where I definitely wouldn’t remember or get to say everything I wanted to say.

Because even if I expressed anger and was invited into a conversation about this, I wouldn’t get the space I need. Other people would be talking. Not to me, but at me. To make themselves feel better. They would try to appease me. To get me to be quiet, stop making noise, stop being a problem. And then they would turn around and say, “why can’t we get any student voices?”

The bottom line is that the administration’s treatment of the Mental Health Team feels performative. The counseling department’s treatment of mental health has always felt performative. Put a sign on the wall about how Demi Lovato has bipolar disorder. Allow teachers to put “safe space” stickers up, but do nothing about the teachers who don’t respect students’ pronouns. Make a Teen Mental Health Team, but give them no power. When they ask for a voice, give them twenty minutes. I feel like I’m here for the school to parade around and to be able to say “Look how much we care about our students!” It’s hard for me to treat this like it’s serious when I have never been taken seriously.

This is a systemic issue. I know that. I know that the silencing of young people extends throughout the entire American schooling system. I know that to really address teen mental health would be to address it on all fronts – parents, teachers, and counselors. I know that it extends beyond the school system itself, to social media and friendships and popular movies and TV shows. I know that mental health stigma infiltrates no matter how we try to stop it. In our word choice, in our frustrated outbursts, in our habitual sayings that we don’t even notice. This is a systemic issue.

One person cannot dismantle a system. But I firmly believe that one person can be the beginning of an idea that changes a system. I know it seems like an insurmountable problem, but that’s because it is a large one, and it will take time. So what I ask of you is this: keep the Teen Mental Health Team around. Try hard to listen to them. Try hard to give them more space than you think they need. Be empathetic – know that this is harder for them than you can imagine. Don’t give up on the team just because you think it isn’t doing anything. Someday, after many many hours of punching a brick wall until our fists are bloody and bruised, the wall just might begin to crack.

Sincerely,

Callie.

Thank you for listening to Fast Facts for Gen Z. The new semester starts soon, so the release schedule may change as I adjust. Hopefully, though, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming soon enough. Much love. This is Callie, signing off.