White House Invites Local Students to Greet South Korean President

Michael Campbell, the principal of , got an unusual phone call last week. 

The woman on the other end of the line said that she was Michelle Obama's secretary, and she wanted to invite Campbell and Centreville students to the White House on October 13th. 

"I thought it was a practical joke," Campbell said. 

It wasn't. Next week Campbell and 40 of his students will join President Barack Obama and the First Lady in greeting South Korea's president, Lee Myung-bak, during Myung-bak's visit to the United States. The CVHS students are all members of the school's Korean Club. Campbell said that students from  will also participate in the event. 

So far, the White House hasn't told him much about what the morning will entail, but they've publicized it as the "largest White House Tweetup yet," so there will likely be many people there (A "Tweetup" is when people who interact on Twitter meet in real life). The students will leave the Centreville area around 6:30 a.m. so they can be there when Myung-bak will arrive on the South Lawn. 

Campbell doesn't know why the schools were selected, but it likely has something to do with the demographics. In the 2010-2011 school year, about 30 percent of the students at Centreville and 55 percent of the students at Powell were of Asian descent, according to FCPS data (the latest available). 

Everyone is fully conscious of the honor this is, Campbell said. "The kids are very excited."