School life / Ten days in October 2006, Montgomery Blair High School
Italian Students Arrived at Blair in the Middle of Spirit Week
In October 2006, eleven students from Rome spent ten days at a Maryland high school. Their first look at American high school was a hallway decorated as Candyland.
In October 2006, eleven students from a high school in Rome, one boy and ten girls, spent ten days at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, through Blair's International Studies Academy. They arrived during spirit week.
The student paper, Silver Chips, described what they walked into. A girl in neon pink leggings, a floral green dress, gold fairy wings and red rain boots ran through the student center. The main hallway was decorated as the board games Life, Clue, Candyland and Monopoly. There was a paper mountain. There was a giant crossword puzzle on a wall.
This was their first glimpse of American high school. They had seen the movies. Then they walked into Candyland.
One of the visitors told the paper that American high school was surprisingly similar to what she had expected from TV. Her first day was pajama/formal day. She was pleasantly surprised by how many students took part. Of the pep rally she said: "The pep rally was kind of like a soccer stadium in Italy with all of the people screaming and cheering, except not quite as loud."
To an Italian, "like a soccer stadium, but quieter" is a rave review with a reservation attached.
An Italian junior who was spending the whole year at Blair found the week extremely weird and funny, and said everybody seemed to be screaming for no reason. The homecoming football game, the first the visitor attended, matched what she had seen on television. In person, she found it cold and dull.
Her host, a Blair junior, said the visitor was surprised that an American student could take an art class and a music class on the same day. In Italy, she'd explained, students choose a path at 13. She absolutely loved spirit week, her host said, and got into it as the week went on. Her host helped her make a costume for Adventure Day.
At our house, the eldest's spirit week this fall included pajama day, twin day and decade day. On decade day she went as the 1980s, in my old jacket. The youngest, who had never seen the jacket, asked if it was a costume. The eldest said yes. I said no. We were both right, which is the most American thing that has happened in this house all year.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Josie Callahan, A whole new world, Silver Chips Online, November 9, 2006 silverchips.mbhs.edu
- Ruxanda, My Shocked Face, PAX Exchange, September 21, 2023 pax.org
- Milo Platz-Walker, European exchange programs foster cultural interaction, U-High Midway, September 26, 2024, page 2 resources.finalsite.net