Since Voyages is a transfer school, students graduate throughout the year as they accumulate credits, with students coming and going all the time. Student self-portraits hang in the lobby of Voyages Prep. “Walking into the lobby and seeing your artwork and your portrait, that’s powerful. Working together connected the students to each other and their teachers, and then as the completed projects were displayed in the lobby, it gave the students a greater sense of being part of the community, school leaders said. With the help of artist Traci Molloy, students spent the first two weeks of school immersed in creating a self-portrait, a collaborative class poem, and building a schoolwide sculpture made of meaningful objects brought in by the community. “We need to get to know each other all over again, and in a different way,” said Katherine Martinez, the school’s assistant principal. School leaders at Voyages searched for their own way to process what they’d been through, to forge personal connections, and to get ready to teach and learn. But the transition back has been rocky, with educators reporting more fights on campus, and the city ramping up the use of metal detectors after five guns were uncovered in schools over a recent two-day span. The city hired hundreds of new social workers and is using new screening tools to check-in on how students are faring socially. It’s a challenge faced by many schools in New York City, where education leaders have promised to make student mental health a priority. “We need to get to know each other all over again, and in a different way.” And that’s kind of what I wanted to represent inside my photo.”Īfter a grueling and often heartbreaking year, when about half of the school’s 250 students learned remotely full time, Voyages Prep faced enormous questions about how to come back together. “And then I was a little bit more open, and I decided to take my mask off. “I had first-day of school nerves,” he said of the masked photo he used to create his self-portrait. In the background is the Brooklyn Bridge, representing his home borough. It shows his face split down the middle, with one half wearing a surgical mask, the other uncovered. Horodecki’s hangs within eyeshot of the entrance. The lobby of the Elmhurst, Queens, building, a former factory with floor-to-ceiling windows, is lined with portraits students made in the first weeks of school. When Ryan Horodecki walks into Voyages Preparatory, a transfer high school for students who have fallen behind and are at risk of dropping out, one of the first things he sees is his self portrait.
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