Four County
Our YOUTH -continued from page 27
Middletown’s Mercy High School Class Of 2016
“If you are to be
well-grounded and focused, you must continue to develop inner freedom and a spirit of service which can only come about through your ongoing inner spiritual formation,
June/July 2016
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life. Seek to love the Lord more and more daily. A good life is answering God’s call.” The Class of 2016 salutatorians are Natalie Davoodi and Mackenzie Pias, both accomplished students and star athletes. “I’ll forever be grateful that I was able to be a part of a community of acceptance where each faculty member and student was willing to lend a helping hand whether they knew you or not,” Davoodi said.
St. Bernard School -continued fron page 24 who want to come to school in the U.S. as early as possible. For members of the middle class in China who want their children to go to college in the U.S., an American private high school diploma gives them a head start on their applications. “They helped me on my college essay. I took four AP classes, and on most of them I got a good score,” said Lawrence Liang, who also graduated from St. Bernard. “Now I know more about American culture, like how to use YouTube or how to find resources when you’re doing a research paper,” he added. Liang, who is from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, applied to 11 colleges from St. Bernard and will start in the fall at the University of California - Irvine and will major in biomedical engineering. “I’m prepared,” he said. St. Bernard is far from the only school to realize the demand and develop programs to entice Chinese students to its halls. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs numbers that the Boston Globe reported in March, the population of international students in New England went from more than 9,000 in 2010 to nearly 14,000 in 2015. In Connecticut alone, that number reached 3,548 last year. “I think just about all of the private schools are looking to have involvement with international students,” said Donald Macrino, who has been the headmaster at St. Bernard since 2014. Marketing the school to teenagers eager to start on their American educations has proved mutually beneficial, Macrino said. Catherine Brown, the director of St. Bernard’s international program, said she started cautiously.. “I entered the international world very carefully,” Brown said. She began by choosing one agency, eventually building up relationships with a network of seven agencies with offices in China and the U.S.
All seven are certified by the Council of Standards in International Education, she said. “Whatever agency that I worked with had to be certified to make sure that their standards were acceptable to us and under the rules of the State Department,” she said. Brown has also visited the agencies and schools St. Bernard applicants attend. She plans to go back at least once this year, she said. “I had a better idea of who the students were, where they were coming from, and what their expectations were to see if it would be a good fit,” she said. The school has accepted 14 more Chinese students who will start at St. Bernard this fall. For now, Brown said, the cap of 45 international students won’t be growing. “That’s a very strong number for us,” she said. All the students interviewed said they were glad they came, despite some initial culture shock. The agencies that helped them apply to St. Bernard also placed them with host families in the area, an experience junior Karen Liu said helped her adjust. Macrino said he and Brown organized group lunches with some of the school’s Chinese students and encouraged events like a Chinese New Year celebration, complete with dumplings and a dragon in the school’s front lobby. “I think we’re trying to bring the two cultures closer together so that they can learn more from each other,” he said. “Catholic schools have changed, and they have progressed wonderfully,” Headmaster Macrino said. “They have opened their arms to all members of society ... and I think that’s a wonderful thing.” Macrino, who spent decades of his career in public schools before taking over the top position at St. Bernard two years ago, said it’s St. Bernard’s
Isabelle Yu, right, with classmate Marissa Fratoni, try to coax a smile out of Yu’s sister Alexandria, 18-months, as the St. Bernard School class of 2016 gets ready for the school’s fiftyeighth commencement exercises Friday, May 27, 2016 at the Cathedral of St. Patrick in Norwich. (Sean D. Elliot/The Day)
reputation for providing a highquality education, not its religious underpinnings, that is drawing scores of Chinese students to apply. “When you look at those ideas of kindness and compassion and service to the community ... a rigorous curriculum, a sense of family — those have international appeal,” he said. “I think that our Chinese students respond to those just as well as our Catholic students do.”