By Marcos Buitrago, Juliane Schindler, and Felipe Serpa
EAB is like a big family, consisting of people from a variety of countries, religions and cultures. The first half of our school’s motto is to celebrate diversity and we are glad to accept the new students who become part our community each year.
We interviewed three new students in this school year, in order to inform ourselves of their past and first impressions.
Gino Lucchese is Brazilian and he is in this year’s senior class. As we asked Gino questions, we noticed that he is already quite comfortable in our community. Returning to his home town after living in two foreign countries (Dominican Republic and Nicaragua), Gino explains that he will only be staying at our school for a semester. He also tells that he came to Brasilia in order to spend some time with his father, and will leave our school in December.
Living in two countries whose native language is Spanish, it is unsurprising that he speaks the language fluently – along with English and Portuguese. We asked him to compare EAB with his old school and he spoke to our relative smallness: “EAB is one tenth of the size of my older school, with fewer people, but the technology is higher quality.”
Gino is interested in becoming involved with service learning programs and is trying out for EAB’s Varsity Soccer team, which shows that he is already integrating in our community.
We asked him what he would like to change at EAB, and he answered that he misses the bigger campus. He suggests to us that, to facilitate integrating new students, each grade should have a group session to introduce old students to new ones, and vice versa, in order to make it easier for new students to be integrated. Finally, we asked him what he misses most from his old school – the answer was immediate: “Friends.”
Emilio Fresnadillo is another new student at EAB. He comes from Spain and has never lived in any other country before. Emilio came to EAB because of his father’s work as a diplomat at the Spanish embassy. Living in a foreign country is a completely new experience for him.
Coming from a giant city like Madrid, it is hard for him to become comfortable in Brasilia, since it is so different. He has lived in Brasilia for less than a month and he will stay with us for two more years (his junior and senior year).
As a new student who doesn’t speak English, he wishes for teachers who could speak more than one language in our school. However, he is friends with Spanish-speaking people at our school, which helps him integrate into our community.
EAB is bigger than his old school and he tells us that he likes the facilities, but he thinks the basketball courts should be improved. He is now trying-out for our soccer and basketball teams.
Lucia Perez Alfaro moved to Brasilia from Argentina because her dad works at an international bank. She is a senior at EAB and will stay in Brasilia until graduation. She has lived in Ecuador, Argentina and Suriname, and is now enjoying her time in Brasilia. She speaks English and Spanish fluently, which makes it easier for her to assimilate into the EAB culture.
As we spoke with her, we could tell that she really likes Brasilia, explaining that she enjoys the different places people can go to and the variety of different activities available, and also appreciates the cleanliness and layout of the city. She tells us that she likes the campus but that she comes from another school system where the class stays together in the same classroom the entire day. Answering the question of how EAB could improve in integrating new students, she says: “When you are new, nobody talks to you; nobody comes up to you and starts talking to you. That is one thing I didn’t like when I first got here.” We can and should all help here!
These three new students tell us one thing that they have in common: they miss their friends and their old environment where they felt comfortable. To be a new student is always hard, so we as old students should try to make it easier for them to be integrated, by helping them in any possible way, this will help our school strengthen within and transform EAB from good to great.
