Jay (part 1)

"We thought it was just a club...we never dreamed it would take us this far."

By Students of NYC

September 29^th, 2023

"I always had a speech problem. Still, I can’t pronounce all the words. I can’t pronounce words with ch in them. Like "chicken," I can’t say that. I couldn’t say “three” before, but I learned how to say “three.” It was difficult for me. As soon as the teacher would say we were doing popcorn reading, I’d slope down in my chair. I’d think about going to the bathroom, and staying for 10-20 minutes. I’d be like, Jayla, come on, pull it together. I’d read ahead to practice my words beforehand so I’d be able to say each word individually without messing up, but then end up missing half of what was going on. When it was my turn, I’d still end up stuttering over words.

I try to downplay it now, but it was hard. Really hard. Because communication is one of the most important things in the world. With really good communication, honestly, I think you can do anything.

The Minecraft club changed that. I was in so many situations where I had to talk to people and would end up practicing over and over again. Presenting to the contest judges, to the people in the clubs — over time, I just kind of learned how to speak and pronounce more because I cared so much about getting my point across. I was so confident in what I was saying. And I had all these good conversations going on. Now, I feel like everyone has started to be able to understand me.

We thought it was just a club — we never dreamed it would take us this far.

In 2020, Covid happened, and me and my friends, we would be nonstop playing Minecraft. I played 16 hours a day. I'd have my class in the background. And so when I saw the newsletter in our emails about the Minecraft club, I talked about it to all my friends from other schools. I was rubbing it in their face. I have a club, and you guys don’t! After that I got really, really invested. I started playing every Monday, and when it was not Monday, we would beg Mr. Ahmed to open the club. We would email him all the time. We thought he was going to hate us.

One thing about online games, you’re always going to encounter a bunch of people. And I remember playing a lot in 2020, when the George Floyd protests were going on. They would spam the chat with the most racist stuff. To the point where I felt like my character couldn’t even wear black skin when I was playing the games, because of the reactions it would get. So I said forget it, no more black skin. And I became a duck. You can’t mess with a duck. And the comments stopped. But it’s just wrong: it shouldn’t be a white space. I'm so passionate about breaking that barrier and making it into an inclusive space.

At the first gaming competition, they told us to dress in formal wear. I wore a nice purple button down and dress pants. We all dressed up, and we were the only team that did that. Other teams came in like Nike Techs and we were like, oh, I don't think we got the memo. So already, I felt unsettled, right? They gave us a prompt, and we had to build a solution. It was: how to make NYC a more sustainable and better place. So we said, okay. We need solar panels, first. Then better transportation, electrical vehicles, we need to decrease our carbon footprint — make public transit more accessible. We all had different ideas. Brit was really focused on using sustainable building blocks. I was more keen on the education piece. I used to work at the botanical gardens, teaching kids how to plant and fertilize. I liked it, even though it was hard keeping the kids from getting dirt all over themselves. So anyway, I was like, we should teach people how to grow their greens, use greenhouses. I always try to make greenhouses a part of my builds.

We were all by the stairs when they announced the winners, and they were calling out names and names and names. Suddenly I heard “Crafting a Better Future” — that was our project name — and Esra screamed so loud in my ear, then we were all screaming. We jumped up and down and we were the absolute loudest.

Everyone was looking at us like it wasn’t that serious, but to us, yes it was. It was that serious. I was like, damn, we are really winning. I like to relive that moment in my head again and again. It makes me feel alive.