The North and the South

After completing the credential program at UCI I landed a job at South High School. South High is in the city of Torrance, the city I grew up in. I attended North High School and so coming into South I knew there would be major differences in the student makeup since both schools are on completely different ends of the city. North High was more diverse and has more students of low socioeconomic backgrounds since the school was on the border of Lawndale and Hawthorne. On the contrary, South High bordered the beautiful hills of Palos Verdes and the student makeup is predominately White and Asian.

On the first day of school I watched students pile into my classroom each class period and noticed that I can count with my hand (yes one hand) how many African American and Hispanic/Latino students I had. That is when I became really worried about how the year was going to turn out since I myself am Middle Eastern and Muslim, two things that were a minority at the school. As the year progressed I noticed that my students never made racial comments or looked down upon other races. However, I did notice that the White students would hang out in their groups on one side of the center quad, the Asians would hang out with their groups on the other side of the quad, and the other minority races at the school would hang out in groups between classrooms. I remember when I attended North High 5 years ago there would be one quad all races all together. Everyone got along just fine and there was no dominant race. I really wished that the same applied at South because it was unique to see all the different cultures and what each had to bring to the school culture.

North and South High would hold the same event titles, cultural food day and class competition assemblies, however, the actual assemblies in each school would be on completely different spectrum. Cultural food day at North would have a diversity of different foods from different cultures and I watched as students would embrace the different cultures and get to know one another. At South, cultural food day consisted of clubs buying food from fast food chains such as In-N-Out, Taco Bell, Jamba Juice, etc to sell to other students. Furthermore, the assemblies at North included all types of performances from different cultures. I remember in one assembly alone there was belly dancing, hula dancing, line dancing, hip-hop, contemporary, samba, the Chinese dragon presentation , and any other cultural performance you can think of. South's assemblies had the same repetitive dances of hip-hop and contemporary dance.

From my observations, I realized the importance of diversity at a school and the differences it makes both inside and outside the school. Students learn so much from each other and it is sad to still see the segregation at South High. I wish to one day see the culture and spirit at North applied to South one day.