The jocks, cheerleaders, nerds, and the geeks . The popular and the unpopular. This is the regular scenario of a high school movie. Coming into high school, many people expected it to be this way, separation of people based on how smart or good looking they are. But here, at the iSchool, it is different. No matter their looks or smarts, the community comes together whether it is for classwork or relationships or advice. The diversity at this school is great. While no matter how different we are from each other, we are the same.

Sophomore Christine Pak thought “that coming into high school, there was going to be so many cliques and that I was going to have a hard time fitting in. But everyone here is so alike and friendly to each other that I had no problem. Although, I did expect there to be football games and cheerleaders. But since we are a high school in the city I can see that it can be hard to do that because of the limited space.”

The friendly ambience of the iSchool is present all five days of the week. Any student will back that theory indefinitely.

Another sophomore, Daniela Lopez, said,: “I saw high school musical and iCarly and I noticed that they have lockers and everyone has their own cliques. But here it is different because everyone is friends with everyone even if they aren’t in the same group. Everyone is friends with people in different grades. I thought there was gonna be popular football players and popular cheerleaders like Bring it on. But it’s not, we are all just regular people.”  

Another interesting thing about us iSchool students is that we are regular-in our own ways. With individual personalities, we each bring something special to the classroom and the school as a whole.

Often, our school isn’t compared to suburban high schools. -U.S. History teacher, Ms. Glass, comments, “In my highschool it was not cool to be smart and there was a group of unpopular students that actually cared about school. It was sort of like the movies, we had a very sports centered school with football and hockey teams.”

If you were expecting a suburban high school, something along the lines of the school in 17, think again. Again, sorry, wrong school. Step aside, Zac Efron.

And sophomore Jayvin Espinal stated, “Looking at your average highschool in a movie it is really big and has extra space. But then you come to a school in NYC like this, it’s small, it is crowded, we share a campus. Compared to a movie where it would have its own campus or own building. Then you look at us again two floors, barely have lockers, and barely have space to manage.”

In the end, the iSchool is what is it is. Many students appreciate its structure, but we are amazed at its uniqueness. We aren’t a traditional school by any stretch. That’s what makes the iSchool great.