New York, NY —
Across the city, High Schools are gearing up for another year of graduations. Thousands of students are moving on to college, jobs or both. 170 high school graduates recently received scholarships from the Teachers Union to try to make that transition easier. Many recipients are immigrants from modest backgrounds. Cindy Rodriguez interviewed one aspiring doctor.
REPORTER: Tenzin Kalden will be graduating from Martin Luther King High School in a few weeks. The school across from Lincoln Center has had a troubled history, though changes have been made to try to improve it. For Kalden though, it is a place where he has grown comfortable.
KALDEN: We're like very diverse that's what I like about it. It's not just one like race and everything.... we all get along. There are some times when people just look at me and think that I'm Chinese or Korean or they just take a guess but I want them to know that I'm not just Asian like I'm a Tibetan and I'm proud to be one and that Tibet used to be a country and everything. When they ask me what's your nationality what's your heritage and I be like I'm from Tibet and I'm Buddhist and everything they don't get that they be like what is Tibet.
REPOTRER: The 18 year old came to the United States at 14, speaking Tibetan and Hindi but no English. His parents fled from Tibet to India where he was born. He says at the age of six, he was sent to a boarding school because his parents were too poor to keep him at home.
KALDEN: My dad himself he dropped me at the school and I was very young and they sent me to the principals office and like he handed me a sheet saying name:Tenzin Kalden, room number:5622, and home 21 and basically this home 21 is where I lived. Where I grew up with a lot of other kids.
REPORTER: Kalden says he shared one bedroom with 24 other boys. They slept on bunk beds stacked nearly to the ceiling. Though he says the school had only the bare essentials - far less than his somewhat run down Manhattan high school - its where he says he learned the discipline necessary to become a good student. Now Kalden has plans to go to city college.
KALDEN: I was thinking of staying in New York since my family we need each other as in I need them and they need me.
REPORTER: The teenager plans to work while going to college in order to help support his family. Right now he and his 16 year old brother have construction jobs on the weekends to help pay the bills.
KALDEN: It's a work out for us at the same time. Whatever money we get it goes to the family. It's a tradition of our family. It's like whatever she works goes to my family, me, my brother.
REPORTER: Tenzin is sitting at a table with his 14-year-old sister, mother and father. The three are dressed up waiting to enter a ceremony where the teenager will be honored for his perseverance. Tenzin's father is a cook at a restaurant. He also says he was a former child soldier and bodyguard to the Dali Lama.
He describes his work as grueling and says while his body is tired mentally he is very happy for his son's education. For WNYC, I'm Cindy Rodriguez.