Her high school friends were failing at college, one by one. So-and-so flunked out of that school, or this kid partied too much and got kicked out. All the time, Raquel would see the same news.
She unfriended him on Facebook.īut other friends she had on Facebook seemed to be struggling with the same things he had. Raquel finished her senior year without Jonathan. Jonathan came back to the Bronx, got a job at the front desk of a gym, and moved back in with his mom. To this day, they don't know where she is. Because she did not finish the last month of the year. And you knew at that moment- it was moving because you knew at that moment Melanie felt safe.Īnd that's when Melanie disappeared. And they hugged for such a long time, not one of these hugs.
#Shamyla this american life full#
And Middlebury, we're talking about a serious, serious school- full scholarship.Īnd Melanie buried her face in Lillian's shoulder here. She says, Middlebury accepted you, full scholarship. And Lillian walks in, and she waves a piece of paper. And Melanie was really on a tear about white bitches and they don't know anything about the world. Marlena Edelstein, a Fieldston student, told me the girl who shadowed her, she doesn't remember her name. They partnered all the students up, so the University Heights kids could go with the Fieldston kids to some of their classes. And for a while, it seemed like the moment had passed, and they were fine. But the teachers managed to calm her down. So apparently, Melanie started crying the moment she got to Fieldston, wanted to leave. I wondered about Melanie because she had such a strong, immediate reaction that everyone remembered, but also because listen to what happened after that. Let's begin with Melanie, the girl who freaked out. Today's show, what happens when you see the other side, and it looks a lot better? And it turns out this one experience really has shaped some of the public school kids in profound ways, ways I did not see coming. They're in their mid-20s now, so they've gone to college, gotten apartments and jobs. Does it hurt or help the public school kids? It occurred to me that the group of kids who were part of that first year exchange between Fieldston and University Heights could answer this question. The people who run programs like these hope that even if it's upsetting in the moment, ultimately, this kind of experience helps more than it hurts.īut nobody really knows because this is the kind of thing that plays out over time. And you freak out, like that one girl, Melanie. You see how much you did not get, and it's shocking or painful. Exposure is a tool for social change and economic mobility. The idea is if you want a kid to move from one social class to another, that kid has to see what it looks like over there on the other side.
Or if you just know someone who went to college, that'll help. You know, you take a group of kids to tour a college campus, they'll be more likely to go to college. Right now, there's a popular idea in education- it pops up all over the place- about exposure, that exposure is particularly important for poor kids- not just important, that it can change destinies.
But of course, then there's the question, what do the public school kids get out of it? And part of the point of programs like these that try to bridge the divide is- seeing as the private school kids will likely go on to be important, influential people, maybe write education policy or finance new businesses- it's good for them to know not everybody's life looks like theirs. Lisa, the public school teacher, says the moment her kids got off the bus at Fieldston, the private school, they had a dramatic reaction to what they saw.Ī lot of Fieldston students do go on to be politicians, and run Walt Disney and the New York Times, and host evening news programs, and design major American cities. They were pen pals for a while, which was going well.Īnd then Lisa and Angela planned a time to get them together. The teachers started by having their students write letters to each other. These two schools were three miles from each other, but the students basically needed a foreign exchange program to meet each other. One in five kids gets financial aid, which is helpful because last year tuition was $43,000. But it's one of New York City's elite private schools. It's located in the poorest congressional district in the country, the South Bronx.Īngela Vassos' school, Fieldston, is also in the Bronx. Lisa Greenbaum's school, University Heights High School, is a public school. They thought their students would get a lot out of meeting each other and learning about one another's schools because their students spend their school days in two very different places.
Kids from Lisa's school would see Angela's school and vice versa. In 2005, Lisa and Angela were part of a program that brought their two schools together, sort of a classroom exchange.
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