By GottaLaff
Sidwell Friends School in northwest Washington.
Photo: AP
Trying to be "normal" when you're the First Daughters of the first African American president at a private school filled with kids from well-connected families will take some doing:Bodyguards will be around, for sure, but hard to spot. And their teachers will have a brand-new worry in the digital age — cell phone cameras.That's a lot for their little shoulders to bear, but my money says they're up to the task.
That’s the life awaiting Malia and Sasha Obama when they step off the plane from Chicago on Sunday to start next week at Sidwell Friends School, which has been teaching presidents' kids dating back to Teddy Roosevelt. [...]
Yet, at Sidwell, former students said, the girls won’t be treated like little princesses. The school will try, as it did with Clinton before them, to help them simply fit in, along with the children of other wealthy and well-connected Washingtonians. [...]
An added bonus for the girls is that they already have friends there — Vice President-elect Joe Biden has grandchildren at the school.
No matter, they’ll be treated like all of the other students. [...]
“There is no celebri-dom at Sidwell, at all. It really is irrelevant who your parents are because everyone’s parents have accomplished something,” former Clinton classmate Lory Ivey Alexander said. “It’s so not a big deal when you are there. It’s almost unusual to think that other people see these people as celebrities. Sometimes people say to me ‘Oh my God, you went to school with Chelsea Clinton!' And I say, ‘No, Chelsea went to school with me!’” [...]
“The school will shelter their experience, somewhat, but it won’t be that they're special. Everyone is special,” she said. “But it’s not that special of an experience to have the first daughters or the second family. It was pretty normal for us and it will be for the people attending there now.”
It is all a part of the school’s Quaker philosophy, which stresses community service and interconnectedness — themes that could have been ripped from one of Obama’s stump speeches. The guiding principle is a belief that there is “that of God” in everyone. Diversity, both racially and economically, are also high on Sidwell’s list, which has about 1,000 students on two different campuses. Nearly 40 percent of students are non-white and 1 out of 5 students gets financial aid. Tuition is $28,442 for the elementary school and $29,442 for middle and upper school. [...]
The Obama girls will attend school on two different campuses — Sasha, a second-grader, in Bethesda, and Malia, a fifth-grader, in Washington, D.C.
School days open with a moment of silence, and each week there is “meeting for worship” where students sit for about 45 minutes in silence, or they can speak if they so choose. [...]
Still, it is the newness of it all that might make it different for the Obama girls. While they will be one of many Sidwell students with prominent parents, they will also be symbols, both nationally and internationally, because they are black.
[A]ccording to historian Doug Wead, ... the Obama family represents a real break from the past. [...]
“People are just flabbergasted. The Russians were just stunned by the election of the Obamas, and that this is a real democracy and the American dream is alive and really symbolized by Malia and Sasha,” Wead said.
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