Episode 2: Javi
“I definitely think that the adults here are super. You can confide in the adults here, and people do.”
Photo by Dulce Michelle Marquez (on pajama day)
Ashaa is a senior at Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science, and Engineering
By Ashaa Khan
At the James Baldwin School in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, Javier Mata wears whatever he wants, leaves the campus for lunch and never has homework. It’s a far cry from where he was two years ago: a competitive, college-prep high school called Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science, and Engineering.
At Columbia Secondary, students wore uniforms and addressed their teachers as "professor." A swipe-in machine tracked attendance and punctuality. More importantly, the hours of homework simply did not feel relevant to Mata’s own future plans.
The school’s rigid environment prompted Mata’s switch to James Baldwin, one of 51 transfer high schools in New York City.
“I went there on a whim,” he said. “I just heard about how it's more lax than the school I was at previously, so that gave me the incentive to go over here because I can do less work for… more rewards.”
Transfer schools are specifically designed for students who are behind on credits. Currently, transfer schools serve about 13,000 students across the city's five boroughs. Roughly 200 of these students attend Baldwin.
The legacy of James Baldwin, the writer and social justice leader, is very much alive at the school. Its curriculum, which includes courses on race, class, and power, is carefully designed to be relevant to its students, who are almost all black or Hispanic and mainly come from low-income backgrounds.
The teachers are experienced and especially attuned to the diverse needs of each student, which creates a supportive environment that makes the teachers seem more like friends. In Mata’s own words, “You can confide in the adults here, and people do.”
As Mata prepares to graduate this June, he has found that the adults at James Baldwin are very supportive of his post-secondary plans, which, as of now, do not include attending college. Had he stayed at Columbia Secondary, he said he doesn’t think the staff would have been supportive of that decision. “They glorify going to college too much.”
This podcast season about transfer high schools is produced in partnership with The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.
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The music for this season includes original tracks from Elijah Goodman, a.k.a. Ejcali, born in Santa Clarita, California, and now living in Brooklyn. He is an upcoming music producer self-taught in piano, inspired by creating various genres of music. In addition to working with Building Beats, Elijah is a member of S.I.M.B.A., a youth empowerment program in Brooklyn.