In late June, the city is filled with students deep in their feels.
“A whole bunch of emotions!” Malik Montoutt said while standing in line outside Carnegie Hall, waiting to enter and begin his graduation from Stuyvesant High School. “Excitement is probably the biggest one. And a little nervous. But I feel good!”
Another Stuyvesant student, Zheng Li, was feeling “a little sadness” at the prospect of saying goodbye to so many close friends. “The past is certain because it’s already happened, but the future isn’t. There are just a lot of uncertainties after high school ends.”
Farther uptown, Lichai Epperson, a Bronx High School of Science graduate, was also excited, and honored to be one of the few black or Hispanic students in his class of more than 700. “A long four years of hard work, late nights, studying and cramming, it paid off,” he said. “I really think I gave 110%.” But he was also nervous about what lies ahead for him at Emory University in Atlanta.
At Little Sun People, an Afrocentric preschool in Brooklyn, a tiny grad named Camille Purvis was about to step up from the 4-year-olds’ “Fourior Warrior” class to kindergarten. She bubbled with joy and reminded anyone who would listen how much of a “big girl” she was.
Across town, Maya Zabari, a precocious Stuyvesant graduate, was just ready to get in an Uber and go.
One was over the moon; the other was just over it.
For Zheng Li, the other Stuyvesant grad, there was also gratitude, and a sense of responsibility.
“My parents worked overtime for two years before high school just so I could afford tutoring for the test,” he said, referring to the entrance exam that dictates admission into the city’s elite high schools. He immigrated to America from China when he was 7 years old and represents one of the many Asian-American families who have gone to great lengths to help get their children into Stuyvesant.
“They worked just as hard as me,” he said.
Little Sun People’s “stepping up” ceremony involved very young graduates singing Stevie Wonder songs, dancing to “Baby Shark” and announcing to the more than 200 family and friends in the crowd their plans to be the next Mae Jemison, Neil deGrasse Tyson or Sylvia Woods.
“There’s something really special about having teachers that look like you, celebrating your culture and on a day-to-day basis having people affirm who you are,” said Aaliyah Barclift, one of Little Sun People’s first graduates and the daughter of Fela Barclift, the founder of the school who is known as “Mama Fela.” “It’s powerful when your culture is the norm as opposed to the other.”
Parents of the Little Sun People graduates said they were inspired to send their children to the school because of the emotions that radiate from staff members.
“The youngsters are lavished with love,” said Jelani Johnson, who has two sons at Little Sun People. “Those experiences are tremendous. They’re fundamental in the development of these young people. They give them a cultural foundation where they know who they are, they’re confident in their own skin and they feel good about themselves.”
After a year marked by news coverage centering on the staggering lack of black and Hispanic diversity at New York’s elite schools, graduates of Stuyvesant and Bronx Science — and their parents — experienced a mixed bag of pride and dismay on graduation day.
“I’ll be honest, I felt it today, the lack of diversity,” Lisha Epperson said after her son Lichai graduated from Bronx Science. “It was disheartening that here we are, it’s 2019, and my son is one of a handful. I’m proud of him, though. Being one of the only ones in a situation like that, it’s very important to hold yourself well and represent yourself and your people in a positive light. And I think he does that, and he did that.”
For at least one student, the day came with a tinge of regret.
“Four years pass by really quickly,” Bentley Dong, a Stuyvesant graduate, said. “When I think about it, freshman year feels like yesterday to me. I did some great things, but I wish I had done a little more, explored a little more.”
Shrugging his shoulders, he plopped down from the ledge he was standing on and prepared to go inside for his ceremony. More adventures were to come.