Agata Poniatowski is a Bushwick resident whose parents emigrated from Poland to escape communism before she and her brother were born. Though her brother was sent to Polish school when he was a child, her parents decided not to send her to one.
Now, Poniatowski is taking small steps to learn it. She asks her parents to text her in Polish and tries her best to respond to them in Polish. In her free time, she watches children’s shows with subtitles on, including a remastered version of Baba Jaga.
Poniatowski thinks that this could have been avoided if her parents had sent her to one of the Polish schools located in New York City.
“I was really—I guess you could say a rowdy kid. I would always be crying and be upset. I didn’t like that ballet class was 40 minutes long,” Poniatowski said.
“My parents probably were like ‘maybe not’ for me, but my brother had more patience, so they sent him and he learned how to read and write in Polish. Although he quit pretty shortly … but he did have the opportunity to read and write, whereas I’m trying to do that at 20 years old and it’s really difficult.”
Poniatowski, now 21, was born and raised in Ronkonkoma, Suffolk County, with her parents and an older brother. Growing up, she became fascinated with photographs of nature and rare animals. She is currently an urban sustainability major at Baruch College and aspires to have one of her photographs published in National Geographic.
In an interview, Poniatowski recalled a moment when her cousin decided to test her writing skills by asking her to write down the word “Łóżko,” which means “bed.”
“I gave her a piece of paper with my idea of how to spell it and she just started laughing hysterically. I didn’t want for that to happen. I didn’t want to lose my communication with my family when I’m not in Poland, so I want to be able to text them, to talk to them,” Poniatowski said.
Krystian Surdel is currently 19 years old. His parents brought him to the United States when he was only 3 years old and he attended Polish school from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. He is currently enrolled in John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where he plans to earn a bachelor’s degree in global history.
In an interview, Surdel explained that the first five years of Polish school are generally concentrated on teaching students how to read and write. Once students moved on to middle school and high school, they are introduced to Polish geography, history and literature. Eight grade is generally reserved for preparing for Confirmation, as some schools require students to memorize over 100 texts from the Bible in order to receive the sacrament.
Paulina Ekstowicz emigrated from Poland after she finished fourth grade. Her father was the first to move to the United States and her mother decided to rejoin him in order to earn more money and ensure that Ekstowicz could get a good university education.
When they moved, Ekstowicz was 11 years old. Her parents never sent her to Polish school, but she was able to remember the language by speaking Polish at home and watching Polish TV with her parents. In her free time, she also reads Polish books and listens to Polish music.
“I think they [Polish schools] are [helpful] to a certain extent, because you do get to make more polish friends and learn more about your own history and traditions,” Ekstowicz said. “But I also think it’s very stressful, because it is like Saturday school majority of the time and it’s just another level of stress.”
On the other hand, Poniatowski believes that attending Polish school helps build a person’s sense of cultural identity and connect them to their country of origin.
“I’m Polish because of the culture that I have at my house, but I think that I would feel more connected to being Polish if I also had the ability to communicate with that side of my family, or read the newspaper or something like that. Actually know what’s going on in Poland. Not from The New York Times, but from a Polish magazine or Polish news. … Understanding politics or big words, that would be cool,” Poniatowski said.
In the past year and a half, Poland has been ruled by the Law and Justice Party, which proposed several right-wing laws, including a total ban on abortion and reforms that were meant to align the justice system with the party’s beliefs. While the black protests helped prevent the abortion ban, the justice system is under total control of the ruling party.
Surdel said that attending Polish school helped him stay in touch with current events in Poland and understand their historical significance.
“This used to be a democracy,” Surdel said. “That’s what they’ve been fighting for hundreds of years, we haven’t existed for several years as well. Now we have a chance to be democratic and we’re just trying to go back to older roots. They’re trying to rewrite our history and what it means to be Polish. It’s just sad.”