MICHELE NORRIS, host:
A child's-eye view of New Orleans must surely be a strange and scary thing. So many of the cultural landscapes they've always known, the shops, homes, churches and schools, now battered by a killer storm with a fairy princess name. Before Katrina, 64,000 students attended 123 public schools in New Orleans. Nine thousand of them are back, mainly in charter schools. The city's Catholic schools have fared better. Of the 40 schools open pre-Katrina, 30 are now back in business, serving nearly 15,000 students. We recently stopped by the MAX School, in Uptown. It's a campus that combines youngsters from several Catholic schools damaged by Katrina. A group of seventh and eighth graders sat down in the library to talk to us. They were all in uniforms, the boys in gray slacks and V-neck sweaters, the girls in plaid skirts with saddle shoes and penny loafers. Katrina has touched all their lives.
Ms. ARIELLE JOHNSON (New Orleans resident): I'm Arielle. I'm 13. I evacuated to Virginia, and now I live in, off of Claybourne.
Mr. ADJONI GIBSON (New Orleans resident): I'm Adjoni Gibson and I'm 12. And I evacuated to Houston. And now I'm leaving in the Treme area.
Ms. TORRIE LOFTON (New Orleans resident): My name is Tory Lofton. I evacuated to Shreveport, and now I'm in (unintelligible).
Mr. JEREMY JOHNSON (ph) (New Orleans resident): My name is Jeremy Johnson. I'm 14, in the eighth grade. I evacuated to Baton Rouge and now I'm in the Seventh Ward, (unintelligible).
Ms. LOFTON: If you would've told me I would've lived in a trailer before Katrina, I would've took it as a insult. I wouldn't have believed you. But now it's like -- it's nothing like my home. I wish I could be home so much, in my house.
Ms. JOHNSON: Pretty much everybody in my family lost everything. But we were able to get some things out, like CD's and like, my trophies, and things like that we were able to get out. And we got some pictures. But pretty much everything else we lost. But it's only material things, you know, you can replace them.
Mr. GIBSON: My family was affected a lot because we lost my uncle. He suffocated in his attic. And we lost our home. And going back to a place where even though they had problems and stuff, to a place that you had fun at, the place that your mom took you, that first house, the only house that you had, is sad. But in this is kind of happy, because I've grown closer to my family and I've become an uncle.
Mr. JOHNSON: My sister moved to Las Vegas, but she's supposed to be coming back after she finish school. But there are times when I miss, you know, my sister, because that's my only sister. So when I'm at home, it's like I'm the only child.
Ms. LOFTON: Before the storm I had dancing school Wednesdays and Saturdays and cheerleading practice every other day. But right now all that's kind of gone. So I'm just home alone in a trailer and it's kind of hard to get through that. Because I'm not used to not having nothing and doing, just laying around doing nothing.
Ms. JOHNSON: So we went to Virginia and we stayed there. And school there, everybody was nice, but I felt like they pitied me, like teachers, like they kind of went easy on me, because, like -- and everybody had a whole bunch of misconceptions about New Orleans and I didn't like that.
Mr. JOHNSON: My main hangout was in the east was flooded in Six Flags. So I just sit at home at night, and me and my friends, like, we all write songs, or whatever, because that's the best way we express our sadness.
Ms. LOFTON: You try and be positive and you get through it, but some days, you know, it just gets too much. Yeah. But like when days like that, like I'll call my best friend, and I just tell her everything I'm feeling.
Ms. JOHNSON: I think I'm going to be much stronger, because I think after this I'm going to be able to handle anything, like, anything that life tries to throw at me I'm going to be able to handle it.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
That's Torrie Lofton, Arielle Johnson, Adjoni Gibson, and Jeremy Johnson, seventh and eighth graders at the MAX School in New Orleans. Poems and prayers from students at the MAX School are at our website, NPR.org.
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