During the best period of the day -- lunch -- a gaggle of girls at J.E.B. Stuart High School is chatting and chewing on the this-and-that of their ninth-grade lives.
They take turns reading Vibe magazine in their Abercrombie & Fitch-like clothes and near-identical hair and makeup. They sit at a long table in the cafeteria not far from the back wall where colorful flags from 15 countries are displayed. It is a daily reminder that they attend one of the most diverse schools in the United States.
Frankly, it doesn't faze them.
Tanzeela Nawaz, 14, is from Pakistan and Marisa Pessoa, 14, is from Portugal. Tanisha Mark, 15, and Quintanya Moat, 15, are African American. Marianela Mendoza, 15, and Elvia Cotrina, 14, were born in Bolivia.
"We're all the same," Elvia said. "We just look different."
Welcome to Stuart High School in Falls Church. "You can talk to the whole world right here," Principal Mel Riddile likes to say. Bienvenudo. Bienvenu. Huanying Ni.
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Many local schools that are majority white or majority black also have significant numbers of ethnic immigrants. But at Stuart, there is no majority ethnic or racial group.
Students here speak 33 languages, including English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Farsi and Arabic. An estimated 30 percent of students are Latino; 24 percent white; 22 percent Asian; 12 percent Middle Eastern; and 12 percent African American.
A quarter of the school's 1,500 students are taking an English as a second language (ESL) course, but more than two-thirds speak in a native tongue that is not English.
The school's diversity is so well-known that it nabbed the attention of National Geographic magazine, which is including Stuart in a story scheduled to be published in September about immigration. A photographer shot film throughout the 1999-2000 school year and has been back a few times this year.
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The suburban school's urban population reflects the changing demographics of Fairfax County public schools, where the number of immigrant students has tripled during the last decade. Nowhere is this more evident than at Stuart, which celebrates its differences with a Multicultural Day of dancing and ethnic food buffets, and sponsors extracurricular clubs dedicated to the cultures of Vietnamese, African Americans and Middle Easterners.
Monique Woldegeorgise, 16, an African American junior who is the Student Government Association's vice president and a cheerleader, said the school's racial diversity is a constant source of campus pride.
"They always bring it up; it's always recognized," she said. "People never say, 'Oh look at that person, they don't speak English.' We're not like that at all."
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The ESL population started to surge at Stuart 20 years ago, as new immigrants arriving in the D.C. area settled in Falls Church and its environs.
The school's attendance boundaries include Seven Corners, the exclusive Lake Barcroft area where Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) and School Board member Kaye Kory (Mason) live. Both have children who attend Stuart or graduated from the school. At the same time, more than 50 percent of Stuart High students are eligible for free and reduced lunch -- an indicator of poverty.
Davis said he and his wife, Peggy Rantz Davis, who was the 1976 Stuart High School salutatorian, considered private schools for their daughter, Pamela, who is a 10th-grader.
But Stuart "was the best fit," he said, adding that he likes that she is a member of such a diverse student population. The couple's youngest daughter will attend Stuart in two years.
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"One of the things Stuart really does is teach us tolerance," said Allison Russell, a senior, who counts students from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan among her friends.
Said Omar Giannakos, 17, a junior from Greece who came to the United States when he was 5: "I have a lot of friends from different races. Going to Stuart, you just don't have one race kind of friends."
Nadieska Giron, 17, moved from El Salvador to New Orleans eight years ago, enrolling in ESL classes and becoming fluent in English before moving to Northern Virginia.
But she often speaks her native language in the hallways of Stuart High. Or she and her friends speak Spanglish, a hodgepodge of Spanish and English. "Everybody speaks Spanish here," she said.
Many students arrive at Stuart without any formal schooling -- in English or any language. For students migrating from war-torn countries, the focus has not been education. It's been survival, Riddile said.
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And because of the markedly different levels of educational experience, Riddile says Stuart is, in effect, an elementary school of about 500 students, a middle school of about 300 to 400 students and a high school of about 700 kids.
But school officials are emphatic that every student -- regardless of prior academic career -- can be a high achiever.
"What we're trying to do is raise the level of intensity," Riddile said. "Some are living lives better than they've every lived and they don't hunger for more. Others are so intent on education, they're unstoppable."
Nancy Svendsen, one of Stuart's 16 ESL instructors, teaches science to English-language learners. The course focuses on vocabulary the students need to succeed in a regular science class.
On a recent day, the dozen students from Pakistan, Peru, Ethiopia, El Salvador, India and Bolivia were reviewing their list of scientific words -- analyze, classify, communicate, hypothesize and observe. They scoured magazines for illustrations of each word and then wrote captions for them.
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"They just have to keep using the words again and again," Svendsen said. "Biology teachers have told me that the ESL kids know their vocabulary almost better than the regular-ed kids."
The school is making other attempts to boost academic achievement.
Next year, school will begin two weeks earlier than most Fairfax campuses under a modified calendar that was recently approved by the state. Going back to school earlier will ease students back into the learning mode sooner and cut down on the review of last year's material in September.
"Most studies show that more time in school will benefit a large number of special populations," Kory said. "Kids need more time."
Stuart High School also is one of four Focus 2004 high schools, which means it gets extra money to beef up student achievement, including performance on the state-mandated Standards of Learning tests. By 2004, high school students must pass six end-of-course exams to graduate. Stuart's SOL scores have surpassed the other three schools in the program.
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An academic selling point for the school is its International Baccalaureate program, a collection of college-level courses similar to Advanced Placement classes. An estimated 40 percent of students at the school participate in the IB program, which is offered in only seven Fairfax high schools.
Most Fairfax schools are desperately crowded, but Stuart is one of the few that is under capacity with an enrollment of 1,500.
"The smallness of it creates a familial feeling you can sense when you walk in the halls," Kory said.
Stuart will thrive, in part, because of its small size, Davis said. Other selling points are its emphasis on academics and, of course, its diversity.
"It is one of the only high schools where an Arab girl can date a Jewish boy," he said, "Or a Pakistani student dating someone from India. It is America."
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These days, the clatter of construction echoes throughout the school as the 1959 building gets an overhaul. By the end of next year, 70 percent of Stuart will be renovated, officials said, with new classrooms and technology, and bigger, brighter common areas and offices. But right now, some hallways are dark, rooms are closed off and the parking lot is a mess. Workers in hard hats are everywhere.
Riddile, a former assistant principal at Chantilly, Annandale and Lee high schools, said he is so used to the many different faces at Stuart that he is taken aback when he returns to those campuses or visits Robinson Secondary School, which his son and daughter attend.
"This looks like the world to me," he said of Stuart, which was named after a famous Virginia cavalryman who fought the Indians and the Union Army.
Margaret Appleby, an art and photography teacher, assigned her 25 students a project on their cultural identity and the 27 countries they represent. Some of her students had never had formal art instruction until they stepped into her classroom.
For 10 years, she taught at Langley High School in McLean, one of the most affluent and high-achieving schools in Fairfax. It is also one of the most homogeneous.
The mostly white students at Langley, she figures, will succeed with or without her help.
Two years ago, she transferred to Stuart.
"These kids need me," she said. "Your sweat really pays off here."
J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church has one of the most ethnically diverse student populations in the country. At the end of a recent day, students, top left, file out of the school, which will be featured in a National Geographic article on immigration in September. Above, from left, students Tanzeela Nawaz, 14; Marisa Pessoa, 14; Tanisha Mark, 15; and Marianela Mendoza, 15, enjoy each other's company during lunch period. Below left, Nancy Svendsen, who teaches science to students who are also learning English, works with Imane.Ben Haj Kassem, 18. Above right, art and photography teacher Margaret Appleby gives feedback to Jose Ventura, 17, and Jaremy Edwards, 16.Ferial Demy, standing, Stuart's Arabic language teacher, works with students, from left, Maryam Benomran, 18; Nimo Noor, 17; Aishah Hassan, 15; and Hoda Amireh, 17.
ON THE COVER: Hina Kanwa, foreground, waits in the lunch line at J.E.B. Stuart in Falls Church.Ron Kronlage, far right, track coach at J.E.B. Stuart High, talks with members of the boys team before a warm-up run during a recent after-school practice.
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