Mirrorball
Mirrorball: A Look Inside was written by the students of Helen Bernstein High School in Winter 2021
Introduction
The stories you are about to read are in response to the prompt: “What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?”
In deciding the theme for this book, we chose to focus on preparing for the future. What this meant for the student authors of these stories was preparing to apply for college and enter the workforce. The prompt was chosen by the students from among the eight Personal Insight Questions from the University of California college application, whose themes also include “educational barriers” and “life challenges.”
Considering the context in which these stories were written—over the course of seven sessions between October 2020 and April 2021—it would have been understandable if the students chose one of those themes instead. As students worked with their mentors to write these stories over Zoom due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we didn’t know when, or if, colleges would open to in-person learning. We had already seen whole job sectors decimated. By the time we completed the manuscript for this book, students across the city had just started to return to school after more than a year of online learning.
Yet when given the choice, rather than dwell on what they had been prevented from doing, the students were eager to show off what they were capable of. They wanted to let the world know that they had not been sitting idly by in their rooms. Instead, they had continued to develop themselves, making the most of this difficult time.
The students also chose the title of this book, Mirrorball, inspired by the Taylor Swift song of the same name whose lyrics go, “I’m a mirrorball / I’ll show you every version of yourself.” In these stories, their authors wanted to show you the different versions of themselves. The subtitle “A Look Inside” is an invitation to enter their worlds, which while perhaps physically confined by circumstance, are nevertheless expansive with their curiosity, passion, and perseverance. Within these pages, you will read about students discovering new facets of themselves, honing old or new skills, and reflecting on the opportunities they have been given or made for themselves. As Gisel puts it so succinctly: “I plan...to continue to use my voice to change the way young people are perceived. We are not naive. We are not tomorrow’s leaders. We are already leading today.”
It turns out, then, that despite the uncertainty we are surrounded by, these student authors are confident in their ability to navigate their futures, which gives me hope for all of ours.
—Mike Dunbar, April 2021