Posted November 30, 2017
“When I came here I was actually at the point that I was pretty sure that this school was my last stop before dropping out of school before I turned sixteen,” Denver Online High School Senior, Clay Griffin-Derr, said. “I was sure that I was not going to continue my education in any way.”
Now gearing up to start college, Griffin-Derr embraced a radical outlook transformation after coming to Denver Online.
“So at my old school, it was one of the top schools in the district, and it was considered kind of a prestigious school. I thought it was really cool to be in it, but then over time I just realized the teachers weren’t really like invested in me personally and they were just invested in test scores and like results overall,” he added. “So I was just starting to feel really discouraged, and I even started to feel pretty severely depressed at that point.”
“I think it was probably the first day that I came here when the turning point happened,” he explained. “I think it was the teachers, especially Nadia Coleman. Like she was just so invested in me personally and every time that I would come in, she was talking to me, and not just about school but about my life as a whole, about plans, and was totally respectful of the limits that I was setting but still saying, ?I know you can push yourself if you want to.’ And I think it was just exactly what I needed to hear.”
Now Clay, along with other student leaders, developed a Student Mentorship Program to instill these same values into their peers.
“So the idea is to be really holistic about it so if they have a specific assignment they’re really struggling in, we don’t necessarily go in and tell them like, ?Okay this is how you get this answer.’ It’s more like, ?How do you get around this assignment that is really difficult to you? Do you talk to teachers? Do you look up YouTube videos and find your own personal process?'”
Student Mentors thrive on speaking as equals: friend to friend.
“I think the main skill is just an ability to say, ?This is just how it is today, and I can make it through today just by focusing on like one or two small things, feeling that success.’ Because if you just keep feeling like you’re taking hit after hit and not doing anything productive, you really can’t come out of that depression. And it’s not necessarily like you start working on school and all of a sudden you’re going to start to feel automatically better, but by working on school, you aren’t just digging yourself further into this ditch,” Griffin-Derr described, noting how he overcame his own personal depression and previous dislike with school.
“I think honestly it’s also about having a support system and knowing who your support system is, and at this school it’s everybody,” he noted. Because at the end of the day, test scores don’t drive success, relationships do.
“I was that kid during depression. I was thinking those people who get out of depression are just lucky. Like there’s no real factor to it. And being one of those people now, I can look back on myself and be like, ?Well you were wrong.’ There was no luck involved. It was because I was trying,” the Senior described. “I was like looking for the good in everything and trying to find any way out of it, even though it was extremely dark and all that. I think just sharing that message with people is what really gets me up in the morning.”