Han's Viewpoint

Han, been 12 for 3 days, joined at 11

-What are some things the school has helped you with?

A lot, made me feel confident, and helped me a lot with my depression.

-What makes you excited to show up to school?

Everyone’s great, it’s nice and it’s fun. I treat my school more like a summer camp than a school and I love it. It’s made my writing, my reading, my everything, super good.

-How has it helped with reading and writing?

Signing in every day helps me with my numbers, doing JC helps me with my reading, writing, typing, doing paperwork. It feels like a fun job that’s teaching you.

-What is your experience with JC (Judicial Committee)?

It’s not corrupt, it’s not something like where if you get in trouble you’re scared to go to JC or you’re scared to get the punishment. It’s fair and it’s fun to do and to go there. Since I’m still working on my reading and writing, I’ve had help from a lot of the staff members. Just over all it’s fun. I look towards it every day.

-What kinds of things do you ask the staff for?

Where to find stuff, and to help me doing things. Everyone is super, like, acceptful of helping me do stuff, even if it’s something like needing to write “the”, sometimes I forget how to. It’s a simple word but they’re still happy to help me.

-Tell me a fun fact about pajamas.

Let me think… pajamas were first used to cool down. You wear it under your coat and stuff back then, but people started sleeping in them because they were more comfortable to. If they slept in it they wouldn’t have to put it back on the next day, they only had to put on their coat and stuff.

-Oh that's cool, I wasn’t expecting you to actually have one lol. How do you decide what to do each day?

Go with the flow, see what I feel, just do what I want to do. Right now I’ve made something called the BFF which is the Bestest Friendliest Facility. Basically you get BFF points by being nice, and if you get 5 I help you do something and if you get 10 I do something for you. It’s just to encourage kindness and to [show that] if you’re nice people will give back, so that's what my BFF society stands for. It’s not just a game, it’s so I can inspire other people to be nice.

-What’s something you’re working on improving at?

Reading and writing. I’m trying to read my first ever not-picture-book which has been hard. When I was a kid I used to write a lot of horror books. I love writing books, but as I’ve gotten older it’s gotten harder because I’ve had less help over the time with different schools. I want to get back into writing books, so that's something I might pursue.

-What’s something you’d wanna tell someone who's thinking about coming here?

We’re accepting, we’re friendly, if you have a gender that you don't feel comfortable sharing [with] anyone or if you don’t feel comfortable going to a school because they don’t accept you, I would recommend here because it just helps you a lot with everything. It may not be the best at teaching you 1+1, but it teaches you that people are nice and people are nice in the world. It teaches you the justice system, it teaches you reading, writing, creative minds, stuff like that.