Growing up, my parents always emphasized that education [is] important. My mom always emphasized that my parents had to do their part, and I had to do my own. Seemingly logical, I understood. Yet, as I grew, I found that there were disparities that went beyond the home. I am Latina. I graduated from Columbus Elementary School in 2011, IEYMS in 2014, and NRHS in 2018.

 

I was in Columbus’ Kaleidoscope program; this was one of my first experiences realizing that students were pretty much chosen to succeed. I vividly remember receiving more homework than my peers, and these differences definitely translated into our education later on. My honors level courses in sixth grade were pretty much copies of my Columbus kaleidoscope class. As the classes became more difficult and students began to struggle, the honors from other schools began to merge. In fact, I wasn’t even asked what language I wanted to take; I was just placed in Latin in the sixth grade since someone thought I would do well in it. Thankfully, I fell in love with it. However, many of my peers did not share similar sentiments although they were apparently predisposed to doing well. Eventually, almost everyone I had class with had been a member of a kaleidoscope program. I only knew two people that had moved INTO more rigorous courses; instead, everyone seemed to be knocked out of them. At the time, I never questioned it, but now I wonder how the school could have supported these students and their instructors.

 

This continued in NRHS during my freshman year. I had been placed in an overcrowded Honors Chemistry course. Yet, the class I was in was not with the group that I had become used to. Only about four of us were from IEYMS in a class of over thirty students, and it was very white. There were only three latinx students (including myself) in that class, and two black students. For quite some time, I felt like I didn’t belong, or that I needed to prove that I belonged there. My friend, J, was placed right across the hall, in a regular level, more diverse class. My friend from middle school had been placed in a regular section, that she described as “fun, but distracting.” There was always something going on, and she told me that it felt like her class never got through a full section of notes. It came to the point where my friend and I studied based off of my notes. I would take notes in class and try my best to synthesize them and understand; she’d come to my house and we’d go over the units together. She had the drive to succeed, but she wasn’t in an environment that allowed her to without taking extra steps elsewhere. Her family couldn’t afford a private tutor, so she tried asking her teacher. Her teacher cast her aside, along with her peers so that wasn’t an option. The only people that were left to ask were her friends.

 

J and I had similar grades in middle school, yet our development in high school was determined by recommendations for an honors course - in other words, our teacher’s perception of us played a large role. New Rochelle pushes students to succeed, but only the students that it wants to succeed; J was left in a mediocre class because she wasn’t deemed “ready” for honors coursework. She sought out to better her education on her own when the school didn’t help, but that was only plausible for so long. She is one of many students that were discouraged from taking AP courses and was eventually pushed aside. The harsh reality of this situation is that not everyone has equal resources outside of the classroom. We should inside. This disparity existed in one NRHS hallway; we need to do better as a whole to ensure that all students receive support from their schools, and are given tools to succeed from the get-go. A student should not be cast aside as soon as they begin to struggle. Had that support been present for J, her future could have been wildly different. If support from our schools becomes ubiquitous, students would be moving into honors and AP courses with encouragement instead of being pushed out of them.

 

In order to truly embrace what makes New Ro so wonderful, we must work to make our classrooms true reflections of our community and embrace whatever challenges may stand in the face of making this vision come true.

 

-New Rochelle High School, Class of 2018