….. while exploring novels and films
Spending thirty-six years in the classroom sounds almost like a life sentence to some people, I guess. I can honestly say I enjoyed 98% of it. The 2% involved wrangling with white students, who spouted racist nonsense inherited from their parents. Parent-Teacher Nights were inclined to confirm that impression.
How people treat others, who are different occupied me as a teenager. Once I fell in love with Sidney Poitier on screen, that was it. But I wasn’t entirely vapid. The experience led me to open my eyes and look around me. And what did I see?
I attended a high school that looked all-white, however, on Sports Day, Indigenous (Australian) students emerged and won most of the ‘races’. Popular for a day then they disappeared. My friends were white, the teachers were white, but I wanted to mix with ‘the others’. I wanted to know. My mother thought she’d raised an idiot.
Years later, I became a high school teacher in a small, rural high school and met racism head-on. It was no longer something I heard about. Should I have been trained to teach students with different learning styles, I wondered. All I had been told was to avoid looking indigenous students in the eyes, but this turned out to be partly-true as different groups had different customs. So I spent a long time looking…
