Op-ed: Exonian x ASA
By: Hannah Henris
Boujee. This was one of my first impressions of Exeter. Maybe it was the doormen. Maybe it was the fountains as we were walking through the building courtyard on the way to the entrance. Maybe it was the expensive carpets and old-fashioned elevator. My mother and I had travelled from our neighborhood Bronx train station to attend this reception for the recently admitted Exeter students in New York City. I was nervous. The other school trips I had attended were through the Prep for Prep program. The Prep staff always told us to always wear formal clothing, to watch what we said, when we said it, and what we did so as not to disappoint our families, our schools, and the Prep program. So I went with a skirt, stockings, and a purse. When we got there, the other parents had already crowded together, some eating from the cheese and cracker platter. My mother seemed to be the only one who didn’t really speak English fluently and I was scared that she would be caught clueless in the crowd of parents or that I’d end up having to translate for her. Speaking to the students, most of whom were white, I realized that most came from Manhattan private schools and were confident in their ability to do well at Exeter.
As for me, I had first heard about boarding schools little more than a year before when my 7th grade homeroom teacher had nominated me for the Prep for Prep program. The program was meant to prepare New York’s “top” middle school students of color, but the admissions process was very elusive to me. I remember filling out a long online application, doing some IQ tests in a dark room, an interview, rounds of standardized testing and essays. Even then, I felt that the admissions process was unfair. The long application didn’t consider the 7th graders who didn’t have others to help them because no one else at home could speak English. The IQ tests didn’t consider the kids whose intelligence wasn’t captured well in the strange, timed tasks. The standardized testing and essays assumed a strong background in writing and math that some kids did not have access to.
However, in Prep for Prep, I was happy to be surrounded by students of color who wanted to go beyond the New York education system and go to boarding school. I tried hard in each class, to avoid the mandatory after-school detentions for those that didn’t finish homework on time, and to avoid upsetting the staff who created an unhealthy and competitive environment among the students. But it was also not as diverse as I had expected. The Ghanaian Americans Prep had accepted were all like me. None of them spoke Twi fluently or completely associated with the culture. I briefly began to wonder why I saw so few Ghanaian Americans that acted like native Ghanaians and spoke Twi. Especially after seeing other Ghanaian American students, who I knew were talented but less structured in their writing styles, get rejected from the program, I began wondering if Prep didn’t think that Ghanaian Americans that wrote like Ghanaians and spoke like Ghanaians would be able to assimilate into the boarding school environment. In Prep for Prep, I began to think that at boarding school, I would have to suppress my identity to do well.
Contrary to what I had thought, I found a lot of classmates and teachers on Exeter’s campus were willing to help me and learn about who I was. But at the Harkness table, it was harder for me not to notice the difference between my educational background and other’s educational backgrounds. While I struggled with Exeter math, my classmates caught on to the math textbook almost immediately, even going back and forth with each other at the table. Especially since very few people looked like me on campus, I constantly felt responsible for maintaining a positive image of Black people in my classmates’ minds. I began to lose confidence in my math background and had a harder time contributing in class, talking to my teachers outside of class, and performing well on tests. Each term, I felt like a burden on my math class and I didn’t know who I could look to for help. I felt confused and frustrated that despite Exeter’s long history of accepting Prep for Prep students and inner city kids, the math curriculum ignored the needs of those students. I began to think of how I didn’t really deserve to be at the table. That there were other black students who would do a better job with Exeter math classes. I began to think about how I represented myself outside of class, about how I didn’t really fit into Black American or Ghanaian culture. I began to think about how unworthy I was to represent Ghanaians at Exeter. Besides feeling uncomfortable labelling myself as “Ghanaian,” I had never visited the country and I didn’t act like a Ghanaian. And worst of all, I didn’t even speak the Ghanaian language fluently. When I went home on break, I asked my mother about why I really only spoke English despite hearing Twi at home. She told me that it started when I entered elementary school. She clearly remembered the day I came home from school and told her that I wouldn’t speak Twi at home again. At the time, none of my classmates spoke Twi and I didn’t want to stand out. Looking back, I wondered about a couple of things: How could that have been prevented? What could I do now to maintain the language and culture?
Before Exeter, I never worried that I may not be able to pass on my ethnic language—Twi. In middle school, there were several other Ghanaian American kids, so I didn’t feel pressured to represent Ghana. The student body was only black and brown kids so I blended in. Even among the Ghanaian-American kids, there wasn’t pressure to be more Ghanaian because we all knew the most any of us accessed Ghanaian culture was through our homes and our churches. Instead, I focused on school. I enjoyed English class more than any other class: I loved the assigned readings, the vocabulary quizzes, writing essays. I used all my free time to read the books at my local library. I felt more comfortable with English than Twi but I never questioned it.
Searching for a way to relearn the language, I turned to articles on bilingualism and language acquisition. However, these articles didn’t really explain how kids that did grow up in bilingual households that weren’t able to speak both languages perfectly could improve. It was assumed that all bilingual kids absorbed the home language well and were able to switch seamlessly between two languages. There was no talk about kids like the ones I knew in my middle school, at Prep, and even on Exeter’s campus. Eventually, I stumbled upon an article on heritage language speakers that described my situation perfectly. Reading about that, I felt relieved that the understanding of bilingual or even first generation kids was expanding.
I started looking to create more spaces for African students on campus to learn more about our cultures, languages, and talk about our experiences. At Exeter’s African Student Association, I was able to find those spaces. As a group, our goal isn’t to force ourselves to be perfect stereotypical Africans, but it is about getting rid of the stigma surrounding asking questions about our family’s cultures and languages. It is about encouraging students to be proud of where their families are from. It’s about taking the time to learn a couple of new phrases in our parent’s languages and asking our parents difficult questions about how they grew up. It’s about seeing where we relate to them and the culture, but also realizing when we choose to distance ourselves from it.
As for Exeter culture, as a prep coming into the school I would have appreciated having more African staff among the faculty to lessen the culture shock and help me understand my identity as a first generation African American. I would have also appreciated more advertising and recognition for Exeter’s African Student Association on campus. If possible, incorporating more African languages into the language department and curriculum would allow African students to feel more represented and important in the school. Including more books and works of art from African writers and artists into the curriculum would help broaden the community’s understanding of Africans in America and abroad. In addition, many students would learn a lot from hearing African professionals speak at assembly.
