Are the kids all right?

This question is foremost on the mind of parents, educators, and young people themselves.

Students today are still grappling with the lingering effects of the covid pandemic, during which their schools closed and their education continued alone — or in many cases, their education and development stalled. Significant covid-related learning gaps continue to pose a challenge for many students.

As graduation and summer approaches, the Vermont Conversation wanted to hear from students in their own words about their lives, concerns and challenges. We spoke with four high students from around Vermont, all of whom volunteer with Up for Learning, a nonprofit that brings together youth and adults to transform education with a focus on equity and justice.

The student guests are: Auishma Pradhan, a junior at South Burlington High School who is a member of the Winooski Antiracism Steering Committee; Harmony Devoe, a freshman at Harwood Union High School, who was recently named Vermont’s first Youth Poet Laureate; Jacoby Soter, a sophomore at Bellows Free Academy in St. Albans who is a student member of the Maple Run School Board; and Mea Ree Jan, a junior at Winooski High School and the Center for Technology at Essex who is also a member of the Winooski Antiracism Steering Committee.

The students made clear that the problems of the world do not stop at the school house. Failed school budgets, racism, and Israel’s war in Gaza were top of mind for many of them.

Soter said the effects of covid on learning “is honestly much bigger than the actual covid crisis that was two years long. We're going to be feeling this for the next 10 years.”

He said he sees a “disconnect between (students) that were that were able to have people in the house and help them with covid learning and everyone else. …There are a few kids who are really thriving and excelling socially, emotionally and in their academic career, and then there is everyone else who is really far behind.”

Among the problems Soter sees are an increase in vaping and substance abuse that contribute to “behavioral problems inside school and many students not feeling safe around their peers because of those behavioral problems.”

Auishma Pradhan said that she is deeply concerned about and affected by Israel-Gaza war. “This is the type of education that should be taught in school where it's very immediate and it's happening right now.” She said that “students would want to know about" it. "It's not okay.”

“We should be able to show support,” she added.

Mea Ree Jan agreed and said that she empathized with suffering Palestinians. She noted that her family “comes from a long history of ethnic cleansing from Myanmar.” She is now studying health care and hopes to work with a group like Doctors Without Borders. “I would like to be able to directly help.”

Several of the students attend schools that have had their budgets voted down multiple times. Soter said that people are protesting rising taxes by voting against school budgets but “it only affects students because people in Montpelier, they don't take those no’s as negatively as the students do.”

Vermont Youth Poet Laureate Harmony Devoe read one of her poems. “It's about being Asian and being proud of my heritage,” she explained. “I wrote it when there were a lot of Asian hate times in the news. And that just affected me mentally.”

Almond Eyes

By Harmony Belle Devoe

You are born

And into this life of

Almond eyes

Caramel skin

Dark chocolate hair

A trifle of color

You grow

And into this life of

Switching of tongue

Beads of phrases strung

“Where are you really from?”

You hear of gunshots

In the streets

Adzuki bean sweets

The surrenders and defeats

Bow down to the white man’s feet

They gave you your life

Now you pretend

You don’t feel the cuts of the knife

They colonize their Asian wives

Now we rise

They must do more than just apologize

Their wrongs will never be rights

We realize

We must fight for these rights

We descend

Like the gods

And we grow

Like the cherry tree

We dissent

We’re not robots

And we know

We cannot be controlled

We die

And from this life of

Almond eyes

Caramel skin

Darkest chocolate hair

We leave

Our legacy;

Be proud

Of your Asian heritage

We will build the bridge

You will tread it

Might have to mend it

Mentally

But eventually,

This will be

Our legacy

I stand in my Asian soul

Full

Of the foods and smells of the kitchen

Kare-kare

Scallions

Halo-halo

Perfume

Golden sun medallions

Sesame oil

We toil

Endlessly

Relentlessly

For the Western’s greed

Now

For equity, equality, and peace

I stand in my Asian soul

My head held high

My almond eyes