Demographics
For many of the students at Thomas Edison High School, language can be a very similar barrier as the one described by Jimmy Santiago Baca, in addition to other issues. 95.7% of the population resides below the poverty line, according to School District of Philadelphia documentation, 25.8% are English Language Learners, and 23.4% have Individual Education Plans (IEPs) due to some kind of physical or intellectual disability. There were 1257 students in 2013, with 80.6% Latino and 16.9% African American (https://webapps.philasd.org/school_profile/view/5020). Appearances are deceiving; if the statistics were all anyone ever saw of Edison High School, or any other school around the globe, we would surely miss a deeper layer running not so invisibly near the topical surface. In January 2013 there was a bomb threat called in to the school in the middle of the morning. Many kids would take it as a joke, others as a hassle, still others as an excuse to miss class; all would have to leave the building, and for a brief moment embark on a journey together from the school at 2 nd street and Luzerne, as a collective community. Each member of the community, some pocketed together in small groups of close friends, would trek, luggage on backs and in hand, between the graveyard across Luzerne and through the surrounding factory district together towards Clemente Middle School. Clemente is also bilingual, and many of the kids leaving Edison went to middle school there, or have friends, neighbors, and siblings who attend. ABC Action News (http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=8957445 ) devoted 20 seconds to the minor news event, and fewer than 5 lines of sparse text, but for many kids it was a subtle sign of an invisible current. Are we not all migrants towards understanding ourselves? One student filmed the whole exodus from a smart phone in his right hand, audio on, and captured the conversations of his peers along the way, the expletives, the rich profanity, the laughter at each other's jokes, and the breathing and shuffling sounds of people walking. Someone posted the video on YouTube for all to see, and it reveals a type of behind the scenes glimpse into the world of an Edison teenager. Language seems to flow from one to another student as they step briskly away from the building, just as they briskly enter an unknown day, without expectations, and never truly knowing that they are becoming visible, and that having become visible on film, they become fixed in time like a permanent memory.
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