Back to School

Back to School as an Indian American

by Shivani Tripathi

After an unprecedented gap, students are finally returning to in-person learning across the country. Yellow buses are again part of everyday traffic and cars snake around school parking lots to drop off, and later pick up, children. I recently noticed fliers outside of Desi grocery stores advertising Coaching Classes, a reflection not only of the large Indian population in central North Carolina, but also potentially the number of more recent immigrants familiar with the idea of coaching classes versus what is traditionally known in America as tutoring.

I chuckled to myself and thought perhaps American tutoring centers don’t have the rigor a South Asian parent desires, although before the pandemic I witnessed mostly Desi kids pour out of such establishments. In the decades my family has spent in the Triangle, it seems some things have not changed when it comes to Indian parents and their children’s schooling: magnet schools from my childhood still hold spots coveted by parents, and an informal indicator of how good a school is measured by the percentage of Desis attending.

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that as a community we pride ourselves on how seriously we take academics. Personally speaking, in elementary school my father would help me with my current math assignments and teach me concepts so I could be at least a few grade levels ahead. My mother would get subscriptions to magazines like Highlights and National Geographic to ensure my siblings and I always had something educational to read around the house and she also involved us in extracurricular activities such as public speaking, also in elementary school.

Outside media would further reinforce the importance of academic excellence. India Abroad, a now defunct newspaper, was a way for many of us to stay informed about the Indian American community before satellite channels and social media. The paper would highlight whiz kids winning national science fairs, include photographs of smiling Fulbright Scholars, interview brainy teenagers getting admitted to medical school and so on. It seemed for Indian American kids and especially their parents, being featured in India Abroad was a badge of honor.

One of our main sources of entertainment were Hindi films and the video cassettes we would rent might contain melodramatic scenes such as a mother mortgaging her jewelry to pay for school fees and a family weeping with joy when they heard “first class, first”. My siblings and I didn’t know exactly what this phrase meant, but when we saw the protagonists and their parents with tears in their eyes at the

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