My students are special, each one unique in their very own
right. They differ in color, personality, interests, and family type. I love
that I have students whose interests range from riding horses to Star Wars to
playing football or soccer. I have students who spend their weekends taking
ballet or etiquette classes to fishing with their dads to listening to hip-hop
music with their older brothers and learning how to obtain swag. (Do you choose
swag, or are you just born with it? The next great genetic debate.) Now, I know
that this is also fairly typical of schools to have such variety, so I’m not
saying that my classroom is exclusively rare, I’m just saying that since it’s
the first year I’ve taught elementary school, they’re awesome.
My teaching partner and I decided to take our students on a
field trip to a children’s science museum. It’s a place that most of them have
been to before, so we had to choose some activities to really sell the idea to
them. We decided to have them do the ropes course (after the year we’ve had, we
needed some team building) and a backyard habitat walk as they had just
finished studying ecosystems in science. The students were split into two
groups, and it was chance that all of the girls were in one group and all the
boys in another. My boys are sweet, funny, and for the most part, eager to
learn. I couldn’t ask for a better group of young men. They are inquisitive
when we discuss literature, they have learned how to hold a door open, and they
keep trying to teach me how to throw the perfect spiral at recess.
There was an older mother there with her two young
daughters. They were dressed more like they were spending an afternoon at a
country club than a children’s museum. They all had porcelain ivory skin, perfectly
curled blonde hair with adorable cardigans, strings of pearls, and Mom was
sporting a bangin’ pair of Tory Burch sandals. The boys wanted to explore the gift shop, and
explore they did. They touched everything; twisting, turning, and shaking any
object that they could. Laughing and smiling as they watched colored oil moving
around, pendulums swinging, and digging through the rocks to name the ones they
knew. These sweet boys also did this without
running around, screaming, yelling, and throwing things. Each item was put back
into its place after inspection.
I can see how the group of boys can be intimidating to this
woman who looks like she hasn’t spent time with anyone outside of her white,
suburban bubble. She took one look at the boys and grabbed on to her daughters’
hands. “Come on girls, there are too many of them in here.” Oh, I’m sorry. Were there not supposed to be
children in the children’s museum? My apologies. Fortunately, I didn’t hear her
say this. My teaching partner did. She came over and whispered in my ear what
Becky McPerfect had said. I watched as Becky scooted her girls to a different
area to look at the jewelry.
I called out to the boys, “Hey, boys! Come take a look at
this jewelry!” As the boys crowded around Becky, her daughters, and myself,
they quietly spun the racks and gazed at the gift shop jewelry. I listened to
them talk to each other as they marveled in the beauty of cheap, sparkly
necklaces and bracelets. Becky and her girls looked uncomfortable and tried to
leave, but it was a little difficult for them to elbow their way out of the
crowd.
