Creating Global Kids

As a parent and an educator, I think it's incredibly important to remove our kids from their safe neighborhood "bubble."

My high school classmates and I have talked before about always being protected by the little Anderson Township bubble of goodness--my eyes opened immensely not in my college town (that was really just like moving bubbles), but when I got to France for study abroad. I was so discontent with the experience at the time--homesick for the bubble--that I didn't live in the moment. It is only in hindsight that I appreciate what exactly it was that I did there.

My eyes became even wider when I started teaching in my current school. The number of fights that produced bloody noses, black eyes, and shreds of hair weave were something I really wasn't ever exposed to (and something I have been warned by my superiors that I am never to intervene and break up lest I wish to get a bloody nose myself).

So my mission as a teacher for the last few years has been to get my kids to not necessarily understand, nor even appreciate other cultures, but rather to respect their differences. I can't remember being taught this concept when I was thirteen. No adult ever said, "It's okay to think it's totally off-the-wall different. It probably is. But that doesn't make it bad or negative."

There's a poster that hangs in my classroom:

Nothing any culture ever does is stupid, dumb, gay, weird, lame, fill-in-the-blank with your favorite 13-year-old negative adjective of choice here, etc. Quite simply, it's different than what we are used to.

As I type this, my last class just walked out the door. They are currently doing presentations on Francophone (french speaking) countries. I've been lucky to have a student from Senegal in my French classes the last few years, and this year was no different.

She spoke in Wolof, the tribal language her family uses at home, and she made us fatya, a sort of African empanada made with chicken and spices.

Direct quote, from a student to my Senegalese girl: "I'm so glad you made this because I really thought all you ate in Africa was like, lion and antelope. You really opened my eyes and made me realize that Africa isn't crazy weird."

Right on. It's not "crazy weird;" it's different.

Creating global kids, one decreased stereotype outside-the-bubble at a time.