I am Latinx. As a child of a biracial family, I was born with a predominantly white complexion, thanks to my father, while my mom has a chocolatey dark skin tone. We moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic when I was young. The only things that separated me from all the other white children I met in the U.S. were my long, puffy, curly hair that stretched all the way to my lower back and my slightly tan complexion. These small markers were the only visible indicators of my race, and they would become the way others determined how I would be treated.

When educators bring up being a first year teacher at a new school, there’s often a groan or a gasp, a bit of shared panic, and a sense of intense exhaustion. Middle School ELA Teacher Meghann Estrada reflects on the good, the bad, and the beautiful of her first year teaching at Boston Prep.

One senior captured what you mean to our community perfectly when he said, “The teachers are the REAL reason Boston Prep is Boston Prep.” You make the Boston Prep community better in every way possible, so for this we say thank you!

"Julianah Adubi. This is my name. This is what I go by. This is what people call me. It’s this name that gets paired with both my successes and my failures. It is this name that my parents gave me. A name that represents a clash between two countries, a clash between two people. This name is my identifier. It is who I am."

It’s really happening; I, NDRE Thomas, am going to be a freshman at Northeastern University in the fall! To be honest, I never thought I’d be uttering those words. As a child in a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses, college was not part of my future plans or even dreams.