If you were to walk into Jericho High School a decade ago you would find a homogeneous student body comprised of wealthy, white, and predominantly Jewish people. This was also true when observing the faculty, made up of mostly White teachers. This created a learning environment that isolated its students from minorities, other races and religions that make up the overall population of this country. Language classes were required just as they are today in high school. Spanish, French and Italian classes were taken not out of personal interest but because it was necessary to graduate and most pupils didn’t take them seriously. When kids took the number of credits necessary to graduate, they opted not to pursue a language and dropped the class, making the classes much smaller. Contrary to other high school course offerings there were no Russian, German or Japanese classes taught because when the school attempted to introduce these new classes, students were just not interested in learning about other people and their cultures. This eventually led to ignorance amongst those who were educated at this high school. Teachers were setting their pupils up for a culture shock

Author of Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldua would describe the new mix of people at Jericho High as a “borderland”. According to Anzaldua, “the borderlands are present where two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle, and upper class shrinks with intimacy.” What once was a school of one heritage, and background in the early 1990’s became a melting pot of many cultures by the turn of the millennium. This blend of different people allowed students to interact, learn, and prosper with all kinds of people, vital later in continuing one’s education, necessary in the business world and critical in other aspects of life.

In addition to allowing Jericho to establish itself as one of the best public high schools in the country, it also mixed a person of many cultures which has many positive influences. It helps in creating a learning environment that reflects the demographics of the United States. The interaction of different people leads to a better understanding of the world around us. Familiarizing oneself with the assortment of people present in our nation is necessary in order to concentrate on furthering ones education at a University. Realizing this in college, combined with the pressures and expectations that already exist there is defined as a “culture shock”. Students who graduated Jericho in the early 1990s felt this culture shock and for many this surprise was overwhelming.

There is an event at the high school dedicated to celebrating the heritage and culture of all the different students. Multicultural night brings every race, religion and way of life together and is the highlight of the year, giving students a

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