On my first day last year, I was insulted almost as instantly as my students set eyes on me. Shayla turned to me and said, "What happened to your hair?!" with a snarl on her face. She was testing me to see if she could hurt my feelings.
Without any emotion, I leaned over and whispered in her ear, "I will respect you every single day, Shayla, and I expect the exact same from you." That is all it took with her. She became my right-hand woman in the classroom--knew how to run the place better than I did by the end of the year.
In my opinion, that interaction would have been completely different if I was a black woman. (That's not to say it couldn't be interpreted differently by others.)
I had to earn it with each and every one of my students. I don't demand respect, I work for it. I start watching the same cartoons as they do. I give them hugs when they are angry. I make them redo their work when they know it isn't their best. I treat them as human beings. I tell them I love them.
Towards the end of the year, I was listening to a conversation amongst a few of my kiddos. One was saying to the other,
"Ms. Roush is not white. She can't be."
"Well she's not black."
"Yeah, she's half black."
This is when I interrupted saying,
"I'm half black?"
"Yeah, you're half black."
"So you think one of my parents is white one is black?"
"No."
"Oh."
As our bonds grew stronger, perceptions of color faded.
Below is a picture Donald drew of me--prior to our conversation about skin color.
*Names have been changed.
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