Interview 6: *** Conducted Tuesday, 3/7, at 9pm in the Hesburgh Library
Name: Sophia Bevaqua
Gender: Female
Age: 21
Appearance:
Occupation: Student at Notre Dame – Art History Major, Gender Studies Minor
Background:
– Lived in South Bend for 21 years (her whole life).
– She went to Stanley Clark School and the Montessori Academy for primary and intermediate schools.
– She attended John Adams (graduated 2013).
– She lives in the Clay School District.
– In HS she did environmental club, Java – a community service club where they helped south bend community, she had a job located next to Adams, she was a dancer.
– Three sisters — oldest one went to St. Joe, next three went to Adams
Why Adams?
– Chose Adams for the IB, it really stood out because so few schools have it, she liked its focus on discussion based classrooms and heavy reading, and multicultural readings.
– She received several IB certificates
– She didn’t really consider any other schools. Her older sister went to Adams.
– Did not take athletics into account.
– Adams had a really intense IB Art Program, and they all got an endless supply of free materials, very successful feeder program
– She didn’t always feel safe at Adams.
– Freshman year quite frequently she got threatened about being “beat up after school” or “cut with a knife”
– Junior year she got hit by a flying fist from a guy in the hallway of Adams
– She thinks it is safer now, her little sister goes there. Little sister chose Adams cause Sophia and older sister went there.
How did she make her choice?
– Just talked to people and got word of mouth, her dad is a prof and she talked to a lot of faculty kids, kids of profs look for education
– Doesn’t know anything about the Riley or Washington magnet programs
– Adams super diverse, thought about the diversity a little bit – dissuaded her from St. Joe
– Tiers at Adams —- IB Kids all went to top 20 universities, AP kids went to state schools and good smaller private schools, Honors kids went to community colleges, lower rung never pursued any other education
– Lower rung and honors rung made up the vast majority of the student body
– All over the board for socioeconomic status, vast majority were lower class single parents who worked nights – all lived in the same neighborhood.
– The IB program has parents who are not divorced and have white collar jobs.
Other Commentary on South Bend Schools:
– Every School has a stereotype,
– St Joe seems like it is the Notre Dame feeder school. She thought it had too much emphasis on religion, that it was very cliquey and very preppy, and that it didn’t have the reviews for different teachers that she wanted.
– Considered Clay because it had a great arts program and she lived closer to Clay, but she didn’t know anything about it really outside of the arts stuff and that alone wasn’t enough to persuade her.
– “Washington and Riley are horrible schools”
– Didn’t consider Penn because it is so far away, and massive “4000 students is too far away”. She also didn’t hear anything super positive about the teachers there.