At the end of seventh period every other Wednesday, girls of all races and grades pile into room 311, recognizing familiar faces, taking their seats and chatting busily. After five minutes the room quiets down, and the girls shift their attention to the words on the board in front of them. "I pledge to be a positive asset to SISTERS,” recites a chorus of over 50 voices, "I am a SISTER, always and forever.”
Sophomore Susan Blythe-Goodman flips through a handful of dollar bills in her blue-and-red-trimmed bedroom. "Forty dollars," she sighs. Only half the money needed to buy the Superman bedspread that she has been dying to add to her Superman collection since her craze began seven years ago.
Senior Rosa Lozano sits upright on Jan 29 in a narrow office filled with books about the negative effects of globalization. As she places a sticker on a book order form, Lozano lists her plans for upcoming tasks: hold auditions for the Sankofa production for Black History Month, email SGR members about the Saturday-night vigil in La Mont Park for the El Salvadorian protesters and finish filing book order forms for her job at the Ecumenical Programs in Central American and the Caribbean (EPICA), an organization dedicated to fighting social injustices in Latin America and the Caribbean.
For senior Nina Nguyen, the desire to go to college is not a question. Like any other student pursuing higher education, she has her goals set for life after high school: undergraduate school and then grad school, allowing her to become a nurse.
Starting this year, Blair students will no longer be able to purchase some snack items from the school cafeteria because of new MCPS guidelines. However, some say the guidelines do not constitute a significant nutritional change.
Dressed modestly in black, Sister Phillip Mary arranges her 68 students into two separate lines as they enter class for their first day of second grade at St. Margaret's Grade School in Bel-Air, Maryland. Once they are settled, the nun leads her students in prayer as their little voices chime together, heads bowed and palms crossed.