Ready to Learn? Starting The Day At The Barnegat High School

They start taking up their usual places shortly after 6:30 in the morning, about half an hour before the buses arrive. At first it's just a lone figure, sitting on the tile floors of the high school lobby with the tiny iPod earbuds stuck in her ears, then here comes a couple standing together by the door, silent. Another student leans against the wall in sleepy contemplation.

The silence starts turning so slowly at first, one doesn't really notice, until words grow louder, laughter multiplies, and suddenly the observer finds herself in the middle of a crowd, having to raise her voice to be heard.

Morning conversations

In the growing hum of animated conversations, individual words are hard to distinguish, but sometimes they jump out, words like "dude," "easy," "poetry."

Apart from couples, many of the waiting young men and women seemed to be grouped by gender as they wait for the homeroom bell. When asked what they usually talk about in the mornings, one group of girls have a one-word answer: "boys."

Having given it a bit more thought, the girls toss out more morning conversation topics: Justin Bieber, things that happened, plans for the weekend, homework from the night before.

"We talk mostly about sports," say a bunch of boys gathered into a large group nearby. "Matches, practices."

Then they add more: someone's big muscles, coffee, girls.

The early birds

Many of the early arrivals spend their pre-homeroom time in the lobby because of their families' demanding schedules.

"My mom works in a hospital; she leaves early," says Gill Murray, 15. "I don't want to wake my dad up, so I have my mom drive me here early."

Murray, who gets up at around 5:10 each morning to get to school, says after listening to music and chatting with her friends, she wakes up and stays awake throughout the day without a problem.

"I'm not one of those people who fall asleep in class," Murray says.

Robert DiCandia, 17, wakes up at 5 a.m. and walks to school each day, because he lives too close to the building for busing. "I'm here early, because I go to ROTC drill team at Southern," DiCandia explains.

"I also don't get bused; my mom drives me," says Alberto Tores, 17. "She is the one who taught me that being early to things is even better than being on time."

"Sometimes it's hard," admits Tores, who also wakes up at 5 a.m. daily. "I have AP classes and that takes a lot of work, so I go to bed late sometimes. But I just do what I have to. I put up with it."

Homeroom

The Barnegat High School bell is a series of high-pitched short beeps, signaling the students to move on to their next classroom. Homeroom is a chance for the kids to gather up their papers, catch up on the latest from their friends or sneak one last peek at that interesting novel they've been reading for pleasure.

"I like to read the classics," says Claire Brower, 16, reluctantly lifting her head from her paperback' -- a 1944 historical novel by Margaret Landon about the Siamese culture, called 'Anna and the King of Siam'. "I read anything fiction, really."

Contrary to a popular misconception about young adults being night owls, many -- though not all of these students — appear quite awake and ready to face the day.

"You're tired at first, but you get used to it," Brower says.

"It's a little too early for an impromptu interview," complains another student, nursing a cup of coffee at the beginning of her honors physics class, the first one of the morning.