Unlike their senior counterparts in the hallowed halls of the U.N, these observers were crowded into rows of wood and metal chairs, in an overheated third-floor high school classroom. Together with their teachers and principal, the entire 11th grade of Brooklyn International High School at Lafayette gathered to witness American history. But before the ceremony began, they voiced questions for the incoming President:
“What do you feel now?" a boy from Zaire wondered aloud. “Are you nervous?”
“What is your plan for immigrants?” asked a girl from Guinea, as her friend, from Haiti, nodded agreement.
“What is your plan for education?” a student from Pakistan queried. A boy from India seconded that – asking about money for college, too.
The questions bubbled forth: Did you sleep last night? Can you stop the war in Iraq? What about the environment? Can you make the economy better? How does it feel to be the first black president?
One of six schools that share the Lafayette High School campus – alma mater of such notables as Larry King, Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax and illustrator Maurice Sendak – the International High School enrolls about 325 students from 50 countries, as part of a 10-school network designed to serve the city’s newest immigrant students. Another International School in Brooklyn was the city’s top-rated public school, according to the Department of Education's 2008 Progress Reports, for making the greatest academic progress among the most challenged students.
About one in four New York City high school students was born overseas, according to the DOE. And the trend appears to be growing: New-immigrant students represented 13 percent more of the class of 2007 (the most recent year for which data are available) than were present in 2006. And more than two-thirds of the most recent arrivals, 69 percent, came to New York during or after ninth grade – to a city, a culture, a language, and a school system that requires competency and exit exams, in English, prior to graduation.
The promise of education and economic opportunity lures many foreign-born students to the States, but too many are thwarted by daunting credit, language, and graduation requirements: Only 30.8 percent of English language learners graduate from traditional high schools in four years, and 26 percent drop out. The International High Schools graduate more than twice as many students – 65 percent – in four years as the mainstream schools, and lose only 5 percent of students as dropouts.
Showtime
The students waiting for the inauguration were new to the country and to its culture; for all assembled, this was the first American election they had experienced. Across one wall of the classroom stretched a quote from e.e. cummings that applied as much to the students as to the new commander-in-chief: “The hardest battle is to be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else.”
Students wondered out loud about the pomp and ceremony, and whether the new president would have any effect on their lives. Would the much-promised "change" be real? Would Obama really matter to them? A teacher passed around boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts donut holes to make the waiting pass more quickly. “That’s halal, right?” asked a Pakistani boy as he took a chocolate glazed.
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As the luminaries were announced, many students didn’t recognize figures familiar to American viewers. Not Aretha Franklin, or George H.W. and Barbara Bush. Kennedys, Clintons and Carters floated past on the television screen, unremarked. When a wheelchair-bound Dick Cheney rolled into view, one boy asked, “Who’s that, Bush’s father?” as another said, “Nah, just an old man.” But a third boy knew, and said, “No, he’s the old vice-president, Cheney.”
