Recently, my classroom gained a new student-an immigrant from Sierra Leon. This student has a thick accent, dark, beautiful skin, and hair that coils upward in strong circular waves. The student also has yellow-ish eyes due to the high-concetration of melanin in their scelera (I had to research that).
One of my students, who is a great kid and means well, pointed out his yellow eyes and hair and said "Your hair should be straight like mine and your eyes are not blue; its thr wrong color". Without me knowing this little boy or not having taking this course, I would think the worst of his parents and up bringing and assume his parents don't do enough to expose him to different cultures and experiences and they feed him with ideas of "white is right" mentality. However, through this course and my progression as an educator, I took this as a teachable moment and explained to my student that 1) they were made PERFECT exactly as they are and are beautiful in their own way and 2) Not everyone is going to look the same and thats ok. Our new friend has hair similar to your teacher and you like my hair, you can like his too.
This allowed the new student to feel positive about himself while also associating postive similarities and traits with his teacher. This, also, allowed my other student to learn power is sharing differences while appreciating other peoples individual unique qualities as a postive thing.
Hi Chanel,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your honesty regarding what your initial thoughts about the child's parents. I know that we always respect that families are our children's first teachers, yet, we also have to remember that one of the largest social environments that children are exposed to is the educational system. Your description of how you handled the situation appears to be exactly what the child and children needed, not only to accept the new child, but also to be more open to sharing their thoughts about differences with others.
I'm curious, was there any follow-up with your fellow colleagues and with the families in your class or educational environment? To me, this seems like a natural next step, especially because you labeled what your initial reaction was to the situation-it connected directly to the child's family. If you haven't already, perhaps this is the next area to explore as you continue your path of becoming an anti-bias educator.
Chanel, I love how you turned this negative moment into a teachable moment. Sharing differences inside the learning environment will help with fostering positive relationships throughout a young child's life. Keep up the good work.
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