Going public

Sophomore Michael Wilkinson's first memories of Blair are like a bad dream. He remembers droves of giants strolling past him, slurring phrases he'd never heard before. He recalls the swirling colors around him and the alien faces he'd never before seen in a school setting.

Wilkinson's first weeks at Blair were understandably a blur of unfamiliar surroundings. Since prekindergarten, he attended St. Catherine Labouré, a private Catholic school in Wheaton, and Wilkinson's ninth-grade year at Blair was his first foray into the public school system.

But despite the fact that increasingly, many families are turning to enrollment in private elementary and secondary schools — enrollment in private schools increased 18 percent between 1988 and 2001, and is projected to increase an additional 7 percent by 2013, according to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics — some Blair students, like Wilkinson, decided to leave private school behind and enter Blair without knowledge of the public school system most Blazers have known since kindergarten. Confronted with these changes, these transplanted students are forced to adapt.

Social shifts

As Wilkinson moved through his final year at St. Catherine's, high school still seemed like a hazy, far-off destination. But he was soon faced with a choice that would shape the next four years of his life: Would he continue his private school education with his friends or step into the unknown realm of public school?

Wilkinson chose Blair. "I didn't know anybody," he says. "It was hard at first."

Having entered an environment with preexisting cliques and groups of friends, Wilkinson struggled to find a comfortable niche. His graduating class of approximately 30 students at St. Catherine's was roughly the size of his freshman English class, and Wilkinson struggled in adapting to the size of Blair. "You're used to knowing everybody in a small school with 300 students, but once you get to Blair it's harder to get to know everybody," he says.

As he became more comfortable with his classmates and teachers at Blair, Wilkinson's fears of being overwhelmed quickly passed. He no longer felt lost navigating Blair's hallways or interacting with classmates. "I wouldn't say I was intimidated," he says, "it was just different. But you adjust."

Like Wilkinson, senior Caleb Skeath initially struggled to get used to the sheer enormity of Blair. Last year, Skeath transferred to Blair from St. Anselm's Abbey School, an all-boys Catholic school in Northeast Washington, D.C., with a student body of approximately 300 students. It took him nearly half of his junior year to finally come to grips with the school's colossal size. "I think one reason why it was so hard was because at private school I knew everybody on a first-name basis, whereas in public school, I see the same people in one or two classes if I'm lucky," Skeath explains.

On top of senior Mihir Narain's adjustment from private school for public school, he also faced a transcontinental move. Narain attended a private Catholic school, St. Mary's, in Mumbai, India until near the end of middle school, when he relocated to Chevy Chase, Maryland. Although he did not enter an American school until the middle of eighth grade, the timing of his arrival and his background aided him socially. "[Coming] in the middle of the 8th grade drew a lot of attention and helped me," Narain says. Narain says that enrolling in public school mid-year made him the center of attention with some of his classmates.

Public resources

Often, the most challenging obstacle for former private school students is not the social adjustment but the academic workload. "The majority of the kids [from private school] are shocked at the difference of expectations," says Blair counselor Melba Battle. Battle has been berated more than once by unsatisfied parents whose children transferred to Blair from private schools.

In one case, Battle received a call from a parent complaining about her son's grades in math. The parent assured Battle that her child had been an A student at the private school he had attended and asked about the typical class set-up of a Blair math course. Battle explained that there were approximately twenty to thirty students per class and one teacher who lectured at the front of the class. The parent was shocked; at her son's last school, class sizes were as small as three students to one teacher, who could offer each child individual attention for the span of the period. Battle admitted that at public schools like Blair, in-depth individual attention is rarely available.

"You can't get a teacher for three children," Battle says. "Teachers have a class, not three people."

However, not all former private school students have difficulty adjusting to a school system switch. Skeath found his academic adjustment from private school to public school to be seamless. "Academically, it wasn't that hard, because the courses were on a kind of similar level of difficulty," he says.

Ready for the future

Former private school students also say the biggest difference between their former schools and Blair is the most obvious one: Blair's diversity.

From the time he first set foot in Blair, the many different cultural and racial subgroups at Blair stood out clearly to Skeath, who had come from a largely white student population at St. Anselm's Abbey. "I think the [graduating] class that I was in at private school had one Asian kid, one African kid, and one Jamaican kid. At Blair, it was a whole lot different," Skeath says, chuckling.

Despite Wilkinson's initial concerns about the school, he soon discovered that the diversity of Blair gave the opportunity to interact with people would never have met at St. Catherine's. "It's good to have the greater diversity, and that's a great advantage," he says. "At St. Catherine's, everybody was just all the same."

Despite the continental move, Narain remained comfortable in school. For him, the biggest change was more unexpected. "There were no significant changes in schooling, except for more of a significance in the dress code," he says. While he was required to don a uniform at St. Mary's, he was free to wear a pair of jeans and sneakers at Blair — a freedom he appreciates after years of strict dress codes.

Wilkinson is only in his second year at Blair, but it's a relaxed second year. Even after the culture shock he experienced his freshman year, Wilkinson knows that he made the right decision. "I think that once you're around that many people, you do somehow get a better perspective of things," he says. "When you're in a small school, it's all the same, but at Blair, you learn you have to work for things a little more and put yourself out there."