Isolation

It's past 2 am and I'm sick. I took a 6 hour nap this afternoon/evening, and I've sneezed and/or blown about half of my body weight out my nose since then, and so the natural thing to do is blog!

We're going to Outdoor Ed the first week of March. Outdoor Ed is a week long science camp that kids in California go through (for me, I did it in 6th grade, but in San Mateo County, the program is generally for 5th graders). The kids stay in cabins, go hiking in the woods, explore the beaches and tide pools, etc. -- all that good stuff that makes being a kid fun and that we look back on, nostalgically, for the rest of our lives. I remember, for example, that I danced with a girl for the first time at Outdoor Ed. It was a square dance, and she was Danielle Knoop. I also remember that Josh Rubel, on his way back from the bathrooms one night, got lost, went into the wrong cabin, and "accidentally" got into bed with some other kid. Good times, good times.

Ok, back to the present.

When we go to Outdoor Ed, we go with one or two other schools from San Mateo County. Usually, the schools we go with are vastly different from ours. We are certainly on one extreme side of the spectrum. Our school is 94% Latino, over 90% qualify for free or reduced lunch (an indicator of poverty), about 85% are classified as English Language Learners, etc. There are, of course, schools in San Mateo County on the other side of that spectrum - vastly white, very low percentages of students in poverty, very few English Language Learners. Outdoor Ed gives our students an opportunity to have interactions with kids of very different backgrounds and experiences.

What happens when you put these two very different groups of kids together? Well, generally, it's a very positive thing. The kids get to know each other, become friends, and, for a week at least, Dr. King's dream of kids of all colors going to school together is a reality.

But there are challenges. Inevitably, when our kids speak to each other in Spanish, kids from the other schools assume the Garfield kids are saying bad things about them (granted, sometimes they are! our kids figure out pretty quickly that knowing a language other people don't know can have some mischievous benefits, but usually it's completely innocent). Also, some of our kids lack the more subtle language adults employ when we navigate multiracial waters, like the time last year when D. got mad at another boy and called him a "stupid little China boy." Often, the worst problems are caused by the adults. Last year, for example, a teacher from another school punished one of our kids for speaking Spanish at the dinner table. Yikes!

It makes for an interesting sociological experiment. In preparing for Outdoor Ed this year, we've had several class discussions about it. A lot of enlightening information has come out of those conversations. For example, about half of my kids shared negative experiences they've had with white kids, mostly because the kid was just annoying but a few were the result of blatant racism. Nearly all of my kids have had ZERO experience with Asian or black kids. When I asked them what they imagined the kids at the other schools were like, many said things such as "I imagine the other kids are smarter than us" and "Since there's a lot of white kids at that school, they probably behave better than us." Even this one from A.: "I imagine they dress a lot different from us." I told her they're from Belmont, not a foreign country. All these discussions led to other discussions as we've tried to explore these complex issues.

I understand there's at least two schools of thought on this. On the one hand, knowing that the other schools we're going with are very different than Garfield, I could have just said nothing about it and let what happens happen once we get there. On the other hand, which is the hand I chose, I could let the kids know and try to use that information as a way to discuss stereotypes, prejudice, racism, and encourage the kids to really reflect on their attitudes and experiences.

Was I right or was I wrong? By discussing it have I heightened their racial sensitivities, thus exacerbating the problem? Or have I given them a way to think about things so that when issues do arise (and they always do) they'll have a way a constructive way to deal with it?

Regardless, you have to raise your eyebrows at least a little bit knowing that our segregated and isolated neighborhoods and public school systems have created kids like mine that think all Asian people are Chinese, that all black people play basketball and/or are criminals, that American is synonymous with white, and that at least 75% of the United States is Latino.