Black Students and the Educational Practice of Tracking :: Free Essays Online

Black Students and the Educational Practice of Tracking I remember my mom asking me one day why I didn’t have any black friends. Even though she is white, she was concerned that I hang out with kids of different backgrounds, especially because I am half black. I had never really thought about it before. I told her it was because there weren't really any black kids in any of my classes at school. I had been in mostly honors classes since the seventh grade and there were only about five to ten other black kids who seemed to circulate the â€Å"honors track† with me. I had always felt slightly out of place in my mostly white honors classes. I didn’t really become friends with many black people until my junior year of high school when I was invited to join an all black, all female, leadership group at my school called S.I.S. (Success In School). By the second semester of my junior year most of my friends were black. Me and nearly twenty other successful black and minority students became a close-knit â€Å"crewâ⠂¬  and an extended family. We served as a support system for each other and I would not have made it though the second half of high school without them. At the end of my senior year there was a big awards night. There was a special ceremony for seniors honoring academic achievement throughout the year. One of the last groups of awards presented were for the Presidential Excellence Award, National Merit Finalists, and students who were in the top ten percent of the class. The names were called, and mine was among them. I took my place on the stage among my fellow classmates. The lights were very bright and I looked out into the audience to find my parents. They were waving and smiling. I looked out into the audience for my friends. It is then that I realized that my friends were still in the audience. As I looked around the stage I noticed that I was one of only two black students on the stage. The other student, BJ Jacobs, stood farther down to my right. Though we were friends, I had always kind of resented BJ in a congenial way. However, our past rivalry didn’t seem to matter now.