Viewing Race in the schools

           After reading the Trayvon Martin article I started to think about how I view race. I grew up on the north shore of Long Island and all of the different school districts that I went to were primarily white. The few minorities that were in my school were only seen in the remedial classes or the special education classes, never in IB courses. I always thought that was strange but never thought anything of it. When I first had to go to a school to observe, I was sent to a school in Saint Albans in Queens. When I looked up the school I found out that the school was nearly 100% African American and I was worried. I was afraid that the kids were going to hate me because I was white because that was what I grew up believing.

As soon as I walked into the school, a seventh grade boy held open the door for me and said "good morning miss" and my whole attitude changed. I realized that the misconception I had had that all African American people hated white people was gone.  After about a week or so, I did not notice race at all.  I stopped attaching race to a person when I was telling a story and I did not notice that I was another color then my students. 

On the other hand, my students always noticed race and would separate people by it.  When the special education teacher brought in cookies one day, one student said “How come you didn’t bring us black people cookies?”.  There were many other examples just like this one but I would try to ignore them and eventually I did not have to make a conscious effort to not notice race.  I believe that students today need to learn to not attach race with the person and to be able to see the person as just a person and to not segregate people by the color of their skin.