I came into the New Rochelle public school district in 6th grade. I moved to New Rochelle from Colombia, and no speaking the language, English, I had to go into an ESL program. I lived on Clinton Ave, between Mayflower and Eastchester. So geographically, technically, I was supposed to attend ALMS. But coincidentally, ALMS did not have an ESL program so I had to go to IEYMS, which did. That meaning that every student in New Rochelle school district that did not speak English, every immigrant non-English speaking will be pushed into IEYMS. Even if they geographically live in the ALMS area. So thinking about, why is this? Why does ALMS not have an ESL program? Is this reason a racial reason? Do they just want those immigrants, those people that don’t speak English going to IEYMS? Cause geographically, if we’re talking about geographically, it makes more sense for students to go to schools near them, no? I ask myself these questions many times.

 

But why? Why is it like this? And I believe it’s an important question to ask. 

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Then, going into NRHS. Going from IEYMS, which is a majority Hispanic and Black school, a minority school, going into High School with students from ALMS, complete culture shock. The amount of culture shock there is from students coming from IEYMS and ALMS, I don’t think anyone would understand it unless you lived it. I was privileged to go into NRHS with advanced courses from 8th grade. The interesting thing to me was that when I walked into my classes freshman year, and this is where the culture shock came, I was met with most of all my classes with ALMS students. Mind you, I was more privileged, to what you would say, other IEYMS students. I had no one I knew in my classes, they were all from ALMS. Everything was different, felt completely out of place, completely. And again, I ask why? Why am I in all these classes with just ALMS students?And that trend continued throughout my whole HS career. The more advanced I got, the more AP and honor classes I took, the more all my classes were with ALMS students, majority White students. So why? And the more I asked, the more I started to understand, that was the norm. And I don’t think I ever really grasped the why until I started to gain more knowledge on racial and socioeconomic factors in the US educational system. Not growing up in the US, the more I went through the US educational system, the more I started to realize wow, how do people not see this? Right? How do you spend your life in this educational system and working in these educational systems and you don’t see this? It’s astounding to me. That this is not seen by a lot of professionals, especially working in schools like NRHS. Because it’s there, and it’s clear. If you just look at the demeanors and behaviors of students in this structure, and their beliefs about other students. The way so many of the students from ALMS speak about students from IEYMS, how many of these students call downtown New Rochelle the ‘ghetto’. How many just feel so much more superior to these other students, just because they’re in these advanced classes, because they came from ALMS, inherently, because of the color of their skin. You can even see this within the structure of the building. Look at house 1 versus house 4. It’s so clear. 

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I might have been in their advanced, AP classes, but I never really fit in with them. Because that differentiation of who I was to them was already made. I knew they thought they were smarter and better than me because I was an IEYMS student. I was reserved and did not participate often, they took this as me not knowing or not being smart enough. But I was keeping myself protected, self-conscious about my accent or what I had to say. And this did not just come from the students, but from the teachers, department chairs and administrators as well. I can say I finally gained my voice in academia in college. And that is why I am back here, because the behaviors and mentalities perpetuated in this educational system can end up being detrimental to a sublet of students that are majorly racially and socioeconomically disadvantaged. 

 

Manuela Arroyave 

NRHS class of 2016

Resident of New Rochelle