Sharing Our Experiences of Diversity -- A class assignment

I waited, pacing around this empty square. The bell would soon ring
signaling the battle I expect but am not truly prepared to fight. In
fact, I didn't come here to fight. I came here to teach, to
inspire, to hopefully find a career that will stick.

"Brrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiinnnngggggggggg."

The halls start to fill with noise. It is more like traveling in an
angry and dysfunctional Central American town than an American High
School as I stand in the doorway, the greeter, listening to an
agitated lilting Spanish interjected with English expletives. One by
one, teens with their jet-black hair smoothed or spiked with gel,
either challenge me with their liquid black eyes or turn them away
out of respect or shyness I cannot tell. Some have a deep cinnamon
skin, others are paler than I, yet, somehow, it is obvious I am the
outsider. In the beginning, a few will be unsure, due to my brown
hair and eyes, if I am "one of them." Though most often, as soon as
I open my mouth, greeting the class with my American accent, talking
"all educated and stuff," I betray myself as the foreigner in this
school, just as my rudimentary Spanish gives me away when
traveling. The few verbal responses to my attempts to greet the
stream of incoming students come back in thick accents my ear is not
yet trained to interpret or whispers I can barely hear. A few shout
confrontations letting me know immediately that I am not going to be
given a chance to prove myself, to be accepted or tolerated; I must
fight for it. I should have been in boxing training, not mentoring
a teacher, the past six weeks.

The breaks between classes and my interactions with colleagues do not
alleviate this sense of being the outsider. In the cafeteria, the
workers and my peers also often follow the rule of Spanish first,
English second. In meetings, Spanish would often be interjected in
conversations, jokes that I would not get or key information
unintentionally withheld from me. At other times I would silently
sit in meetings as others laughed at the inadequacies of whites
trying to negotiate the culture of East Los Angeles.

There was nothing malicious in this alienation. In fact, I liked
many of my students and my colleagues. We all became familiar to
each other. Yet, I could not change my skin, my blood, my heritage
-- all reminders that as to why I am not a part of this community.
Perhaps I never could be. I could, however, shift my focus and
perspective.

I learned this from travel.

I love to travel, love putting myself in new places with new
people. Each time I return I am thrown into a bit of American
culture shock -- seeing at times the ugliness, at times the beauty of
all we take for granted around us.

Thus, I began to look at my life as one of travel, particularly
between East LA and Studio City. In Studio City, a fairly diverse
neighborhood, I do blend in more easily: the way I dress, shop,
talk, walk, as well as the color of my skin fits here more than in
the halls of Garfield High School. Yet, in some ways, I am not
completely in here either: not enough blond and make-up and plastic
surgery. At my church, I am the odd one: single woman who teaches
in 'the ghetto,' who travels alone to Belize and Costa Rica, who goes
salsa dancing and snowboarding, who is never quite able to completely
tow the line of the community philosophy. At my school, I am the
white teacher who salsa dances and snowboards and is a bit too
outspoken and refuses to attach herself to one clique and who has
been intending to study Spanish since she started there.

I love the diversity of my life.

Shedding labels and differences, I use the same technique I use when
overcoming language barriers in travel: we are all just humans and
communication is more about understanding our humanity and listening,
as a human, than words and grammar. My students are people who cry,
hope, fear, risk, hate, and love their way through life, just like
me. From different paths we meet each day at this crossroads, more
by obligation than choice, to share experiences the other cannot
live. If they do not want to learn from me, at least I can learn
from them -- what is it like living as a teenage Latino/a in East Los
Angeles, as a teenager in 2007 in the U.S., as a second language
learner, as a minority within a minority, as Karla, Rosa, Diego,
Arlene, Jose, Glenda, Isai, Luis. From my colleagues, I add to the
myriad of friends who offer me new flavors of living and being in
this world.

As I look at my life, my choices, I see I almost work to seek
alienation as a means through which I find deeper, truer, more
enriching connections-- not connections based on perceived
similarities that nail me into a box in which I do not fit, but
connections formed from the energy of living with honesty and passion.