As I walked through the hallways of Parklawn Elementary School one brilliant morning this spring, a little voice kept popping up in my head:
“What’s the story, Larry? Why, exactly, are you here?”
A bit of background: I was visiting this school in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County, Va., to see what it was like for Parklawn to take in 20 students within months from adjoining Prince William County. I was writing a story for ASBJ’s September issue on the local anti-illegal immigrant law that has rocked Prince William and caused hundreds of families to flee. Certainly, I reasoned, it must be traumatic for these children and difficult for schools like Parklawn that are struggling to absorb them.
Well … no. At least not in the case of Parklawn, a place where the students come from 36 countries and speak 34 languages.
“We’re used to people coming and going, so it doesn’t feel any different,” said Emma Keomalavong, who teaches English for Speakers of Other Languages.
That doesn’t mean that the high student mobility -- and a free and reduced lunch population of 65 percent -- isn’t a challenge. It is. But during my visit I got a wonderful sense of a school with a cheerful, optimistic attitude, a place where having a friend from a different continent seems really not that different from having one from next door. .
I’m afraid I started a light-hearted commotion in a combined K-2 class when I opened a world map on the floor and a bunch of students rushed over to point to their native lands and flags.
“There’s my flag!” (Lebanon)
“There’s my flag!” (El Salvador)
“There’s my flag!” (Taiwan)
I didn’t have space in September’s story for Parklawn: it’s a “good news” story that got squeezed out by the need to cover the tumultuous events in the county next door. I’m sure not everything is rosy here. Certainly, being a high-mobility immigrant student is not easy for you or your family -- no matter where you come from or what school you attend.
But if you were lucky enough to end up at Parklawn, for even part of your stay in America, you just might just get a feeling for what this country is all about.
“It’s terrific,” says Principal Susan Akroyd, “that we have such a gift everyday -- to have the world here.”
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor