I am African and moved to New York about 5 years ago. I came to New York when I was 14. I am from West Africa, originally from Côte D’Ivoire; my dad is from Burkina Faso so I am from there and from Guinea. I have a diverse family because my dad and mom are from different ethnicities, although they are both of them are Muslim like me.
Most of my life I spent in Cote d’Ivoire and I also lived in Burkina Faso for a short time. I have quite a diverse educational experience and each of them has their own unique experience. At Abidjan ( the economic capital of Cote d’Ivoire) I didn’t really like school. I found school meaningless academically for me. It was just a place to hang out with my friends and make new friends.
The teachers didn’t really care about the students. They were just there to do their work and even if they wanted to show students that they care about them they would use physical abuse to show them. An example of that is sometimes when we talk a lot in class or didn’t clean the class or did bad in a text we would be beaten, or punished in some kind of way which was normal for them. The Teacher did not care about doing their work correctly or even caring about students even if it meant assisting them when they needed help. The education allowed it and the parents didn’t really care much; they just cared if their kids were in the top 10 or top 20; and were going to school.
After some years, when the student started to speak up as well as some parents, the president made a law that banned that kind of action in classrooms. But most teachers were corrupt and did not really care about their students academic performance. For the teachers, as long as you had your work required for their class they will do their job of teaching you, but if you don’t, they will punish you or kick you out of the class. That happened to me a lot when I came late to class , did not complete an assignment or did not have a textbook. There was always a hierarchy dynamic between the students. Each wanted to be better than the other and jealousy and the desire to be better than the other would drive them apart and make them cheat by corrupting a teacher for a test score or to pass.
There was a lot of boycotting back home. The education was really messy everywhere. Sometimes college students or high school students will just go on strike and decide not to go to school and they will be wandering around the street in their school uniform. Some of the reason for that is that they just didn’t want to go to school. There was also a teachers and staff boycott where the teacher decided not to teach or go to school. They did that because they wanted a better salary for their work. This made me feel like I did not have any chance in this education because it felt like no one really cared about my education and trying to help me get the education I get in order to achieve my dream. It impacted me because other countries started having a bad reputation about his school students so when you tell someone you study in Cote d’Ivoire they won’t take you that much seriously. Because of all of these students and teachers boycotting we had less school days because it would affect our school life daily and some of these boycotts were dangerous So you had to stay away from it.
Additionally, the school system is different from New York. The grade students get is based on how well they do during their final exam. For example, 100 means they were first of the class and the person with the lowest grade was the last of the class; the students are divided into categories depending on their educational performance. It was more like a competitive kind of dynamic where students had to do better than the brother to beat the rest of the class so they could be in the top 3 or the first student. Since I didn’t really care about school back then I was mostly in the least achieving students; I could care less back then. Because I have less achieving students. The teachers would compare me with someone else. It would bring my self-esteem down and make me more insecure about myself and my academic achievement which made me hate school more back then and not care about education. I wouldn’t even try to prove them wrong.
Where you lived had a big impact on where your school would be and your educational experience. Some people would have higher fancier educations, while in some places it would be less expensive with a poorer education for the students . The public school is the lowest point for the students to get a good education. Since most families in Cote D’Ivoire are low income families, most of them send their children to public school. Most parents there don’t have much money to enroll their kid in school so they just gave up on giving education to their children and use them as child labor since it’s the easier way. Half the percentage of young adults who graduate college and have a diploma look for jobs.
I had a hard time finding a job, because there is scarcity in the job market in the country and so those young adults just look for freelance jobs in order to gain money while their diploma is just at home like a prize. This makes me feel like it’s not worth it. It felt like a dead end.
When I came to New York my vision about this changed. I cared and loved school and tried my best to excel in each subject and applied to all opportunities I could get because I knew I would have a bright future.
I’m happy to be here at HS223 and can’t wait for my senior year.
