Malia Obama, second from left, and Sasha Obama, center, who holds hands with two unidentified friends. Malia & Sasha prepare for Sidwell

They’ll have more new friends than they can count, and not all for the right reasons.

Bodyguards will be around, for sure, but hard to spot. And their teachers will have a brand-new worry in the digital age — cell phone cameras.


That’s the life awaiting Malia and Sasha Obama when they step off the plane from Chicago on Sunday to start next week at Sidwell Friends School, which has been teaching presidents' kids dating back to Teddy Roosevelt.

Chelsea Clinton managed to have a relatively normal life at the prestigious Quaker school — a big selling point for self-described “mom-in-chief” Michelle Obama — but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a heady experience for the girls, if Chelsea’s experience is any guide.

On Chelsea Clinton’s first day, the press camped outside the school — yet missed it when the 12-year-old slipped in with her mother amid heavy security. The media focus has been even more intense for Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, who already are being called role models for a generation of young black girls.

Yet, at Sidwell, former students said, the girls won’t be treated like little princesses. The school will try, as it did with Clinton before them, to help them simply fit in, along with the children of other wealthy and well-connected Washingtonians.

But as with Clinton, some parents likely will push their kids to befriend the girls, in the way they might push their kids to excel in math class, some former Clinton classmates said.

Among the students, Clinton was instantly popular, drawing a circle of hangers-on from Day One. But with time, that faded, former classmates said.

“In the beginning, tons of people wanted to be her friend and they were in it for the wrong reasons so she had a little bit of distance in the beginning because of that,” said a former Clinton classmate who didn’t want to give her name because she remains close friends with the former first daughter. “She handled it very well, but it is hard to not come across as snobby when you are 12 and you don’t want to deal with all of these people around you who want to be your friend.”

Ellis Turner, associate head of school at Sidwell, said that “every student has an opportunity to feel comfortable” at Sidwell. An added bonus for the girls is that they already have friends there — Vice President-elect Joe Biden has grandchildren at the school.

No matter, they’ll be treated like all of the other students.

“There is no celebri-dom at Sidwell, at all. It really is irrelevant who your parents are because everyone’s parents have accomplished something,” former Clinton classmate Lory Ivey Alexander said. “It’s so not a big deal when you are there. It’s almost unusual to think that other people see these people as celebrities. Sometimes people say to me ‘Oh my God, you went to school with Chelsea Clinton!' And I say, ‘No, Chelsea went to school with me!’”

Yet being friends with a first child, has its perks, former classmates said, like tickets to the Inauguration, sleepovers at the White House and invites to holiday parties. Bill Clinton’s presence at Sidwell meant snipers on the roof and a gaggle of onlookers pressing in to talk to the leader of the free world.

Hillary Clinton was a fixture at the school, often picking Chelsea up and attending school events, a familiar first lady routine. That was something Rosalynn Carter did as well — though Amy Carter attended public school.

“Mrs. Carter was first and foremost a mom. Every afternoon she went off and picked up Amy in her limo or she got her to violin classes,” said Mary Finch Hoyt, Rosalynn Carter’s social secretary. “After Amy made friends, they would all come to the house and they were like flocks of birds and they were running in empty halls. They had a good time. It's going to be a lot better than people think. Most first children would say it’s pretty normal.”

But normal is certainly relative. Amy Carter lived in a pre-blogosphere, pre-24-hour news channel and pre-Internet era — and even still, there were reports then that the press attention was too much for her. Even Chelsea Clinton went to school before kids had Facebook pages and those ubiquitous cell-phone cameras — hard to control in a school setting.

Alexander said she didn’t think the attention would be a problem for the Obama girls, as the school is small and the community is tight knit.

“The school will shelter their experience, somewhat, but it won’t be that they're special. Everyone is special,” she said. “But it’s not that special of an experience to have the first daughters or the second family. It was pretty normal for us and it will be for the people attending there now.”

It is all a part of the school’s Quaker philosophy, which stresses community service and interconnectedness — themes that could have been ripped from one of Obama’s stump speeches. The guiding principle is a belief that there is “that of God” in everyone. Diversity, both racially and economically, are also high on Sidwell’s list, which has about 1,000 students on two different campuses. Nearly 40 percent of students are non-white and 1 out of 5 students gets financial aid. Tuition is $28,442 for the elementary school and $29,442 for middle and upper school.

The girls had attended The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, a prestigious private school where half of the students have parents who work at the university. The Hyde Park based school has a similar mission in terms of diversity and celebrating "common humanity."

The Obama girls will attend school on two different campuses — Sasha, a second-grader, in Bethesda, and Malia, a fifth-grader, in Washington, D.C.

School days open with a moment of silence, and each week there is “meeting for worship” where students sit for about 45 minutes in silence, or they can speak if they so choose.

Former Clinton classmates also said Secret Service agents tried to blend in — they dressed down, did not sit in on classrooms and weren’t talking into their sleeves all the time. But even then — and that was before the Sept. 11 attacks — the Clintons said they picked Sidwell because they “wanted to be able to tell the press and the public that they could not be allowed on the property,'' Hillary Clinton said after her daughter graduated in 1997.

The Secret Service and Sidwell, which has its own security detail, declined to comment on security arrangements. A Michelle Obama spokeswoman also declined to comment.

During the campaign, Michelle Obama had several conversations with Hillary Clinton about raising children in the limelight — a historian of “first kids” said the passing down of advice about child rearing in the White House stretches back to Jacqueline Kennedy, who studied the lives of first children before she became first lady.

Kennedy’s advice for Clinton was to make sure her daughter had a life outside of the White House limelight.

Still, it is the newness of it all that might make it different for the Obama girls. While they will be one of many Sidwell students with prominent parents, they will also be symbols, both nationally and internationally, because they are black.

Over the years, first children have fared better in the spotlight, according to historian Doug Wead, but the Obama family represents a real break from the past. President George W. Bush alluded to that fact when he said that “it will be a stirring sight to watch President Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their beautiful girls step through the doors of the White House.”

Wead agreed.

“People are just flabbergasted. The Russians were just stunned by the election of the Obamas, and that this is a real democracy and the American dream is alive and really symbolized by Malia and Sasha,” Wead said. “What they love and what they say and what they do — everyone will be watching and following them.”