High school students get a taste of university life for a day

12 Revere High students get a taste of university life, and they eat it up

Sophomore Takiya Jones (left) and junior Francesca Zakharia talk during a lunch break at One Day University. (Dominic Chavez/Globe Staff)

On a recent Sunday morning, Takiya Jones beamed as she emerged from a packed lecture hall at Babson College in Wellesley.

"I loved the lecture on music," said the Revere High School sophomore. "When I was younger, I wanted to be a musician."

Jaime Vasquez, a junior whose family immigrated to the United States from El Salvador, also enjoyed the lecture - and the atmosphere.

"I liked how the same sound came up, over and over again; it made me laugh," said Vasquez. "I really enjoyed being surrounded by so many intellectuals."

Jones, Vasquez, and 10 of their Revere schoolmates had just attended a series of lectures on classical music, the Arab-Israeli conflict, photography, and "The Politics of Morality in America," thanks to One Day University, a program of college-level classes taught by instructors from Ivy League and other schools.

Revere's is among a handful of high schools to send students to the program, due in large part to Nancy Barile, who teaches advanced-placement English at Revere High.

Barile left a job at a law firm to pursue a dream. She has become an award-winning teacher and a canny negotiator who has landed free and discounted tickets for student field trips to the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Science, the ballet, and the opera.

Barile also has brought together a melange of African-American, Asian, and Latino students with those who have deep roots in Revere in her Culture Club, which she said she started to allow teenagers to share different backgrounds while gaining a sense of ownership in their school.

But Barile's greatest coup has been getting her students into One Day University.

At the recent One Day program at Babson, 12 Revere students sat spellbound in the second and third rows of the lecture hall, surrounded mostly by retirees who had paid the $225 tuition fee to hear professors from Brown, Columbia, Harvard, and Haverford College.

Barile got her students in for free. As she tells the story, one of her students had read about the program and told her that she thought it would be great to attend. So Barile picked up the phone and called Steven Schragis, president and a cofounder of One Day University.

Barile told Schragis that the school could not afford the tuition, and asked whether he could offer any discounts.

"Well, how are you going to say no to that?" Schragis said. "With 300-plus planned attendance, to find 10 or 12 seats isn't too tough."

Since Barile's first call to Schragis last fall, the Culture Club has been to One Day University three times, and Schragis has promised 12 seats for the session in April.

"ODU has had a powerful impact on my students," Barile said. "When I listen to them discuss the presentations at lunch or on the bus ride home, I know they have been profoundly affected by the experience."

Hanan Kadri, a 16-year-old Revere High junior, showed a particular interest in Jean-Marc Oppenheim's lecture on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which included the 2006 military conflict between Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel.

Kadri knows of the conflict firsthand because she lived with her family in Ghaze, a border town in Lebanon that was a frequent target of Israeli bombs during the conflict.

When Oppenheim, a professor at Columbia and New York universities, concluded his lecture, Kadri immediately raised her hand.

Left unsatisfied with the professor's answer to her question, Kadri waited patiently for an opportunity to speak with him face-to-face.

"He was saying that he thought Israel got something good out of the war. Being over there, I saw both sides got hurt really bad," Kadri said.

"He told me that he only meant that Israel learned that it could defend itself."

Junior Michael Truong would like to study medicine at Tufts University.

"It was funny to see the reactions of the adults at ODU when they saw how we were listening to the lectures and deliberating alongside them," Truong said. "I liked the photography lecture; it blew me away, and I'll never look at photography in the same way."

Francesca Zakharia, also a junior, said the photography lecture was her favorite. "It was relatable."