More Than a Stereotype: What My High School Gave Me

I was watching another Facebook Reel very late at night—or very early in the morning, depending on your perspective and how much judgment you would like to apply—when this video appeared in my feed:


https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1DvswRzH8W/


The Reel presents five Long Island high schools along with the stereotypes attached to them. The very first school out of the gate was mine, Westbury High School.


Well, that woke me up.


I graduated from there in 1990, ranked around seventh in a class of approximately 250 students. My parents wanted me to be number one. I was apparently comfortable leaving room for six other people to shine.


Still, I worked hard, did well, and remember the school as a great place where I learned a tremendous amount. My education extended far beyond textbooks, report cards, and trying to convince my parents that seventh place was actually quite respectable.


I excelled at two musical instruments. I took AP Biology and AP Math. I joined the Mathletes—yes, I was a nerd before being a nerd became marketable—and received a school award for physics. I also won recognition for a poem I submitted about the AIDS epidemic.


During my senior year, I participated in a student exchange program in France that I did not have to pay for. For a teenager, “France” and “free” are two excellent words to hear in the same sentence. After returning, I spoke with incoming exchange students about my experience.


I also played football during my junior and senior years. As a senior, I was the starting center on a team that won only two games. Let’s just say nobody was making a movie about our championship season.


We may not have had a winning record, but being part of that team taught me about responsibility, discipline, perseverance, and showing up for the people beside me—even when the scoreboard strongly suggested that everyone might have been happier somewhere else.


My high school gave me opportunities to explore science, mathematics, music, writing, athletics, international travel, and leadership. That is an impressive list for someone who supposedly was not motivated enough to finish first.


The school’s demographics were very different from what many outsiders might have expected. As best as I can remember, it was roughly 90% Black, about 7% Spanish-speaking or Latino, and perhaps 3% white. Then there were my brother and me. I know those numbers do not add up neatly—that is how small the Asian population was. Consider us the rounding error.


Yet I never saw that environment as something that limited my education. Quite the opposite: I learned a great deal about the world, my community, other people, and myself. Some of those lessons came from the classroom. Others came from hallways, football fields, music rooms, friendships, disagreements, and the everyday experience of being part of a diverse community.


I remember the teachers, coaches, and administrators as available, open, and welcoming. My parents were deeply involved in my education. They pushed me—probably a little too hard at times—but they paid attention, asked questions, and helped me make course corrections when I needed them.


When my SAT scores suffered, I was not allowed to continue playing football until we reached an agreement about how I would improve academically. This was not the type of contract negotiation young athletes dream about, but it worked. My parents understood something I did not fully appreciate at the time: football was a privilege, while my education was the priority.


Of course, I still made poor choices. I was an adolescent. Making questionable decisions is practically part of the job description. Somehow, I came through it reasonably well-adjusted—or at least well-adjusted enough to write reflective posts after watching Facebook Reels in the middle of the night.


More than three decades have passed since I graduated. Things change, and they do not always change for the better. I cannot pretend that my experience in 1990 automatically reflects what students experience there today. Apparently, neither the school nor I has remained frozen in time, although some mornings my knees suggest otherwise.


But a school should never be reduced to a stereotype in a social-media video. A school is its students, families, teachers, coaches, administrators, opportunities, struggles, and shared history. It is also the lessons its graduates carry with them long after they leave.


When a school is not serving its students as well as it should, students and parents have a responsibility to speak up, ask questions, demand accountability, and advocate for change. Educators and administrators must be willing to listen and respond. Strong schools are built through involvement, communication, and a shared commitment to doing better.


My high school was not perfect. Neither was I. But it gave me room to learn, compete, create, travel, stumble, recover, and grow.


No stereotype can capture all of that—especially one squeezed into a Reel between cooking videos, dance challenges, and whatever the algorithm thinks I need to see at two o’clock in the morning.