You know when you can see a picture and suddenly you are so clearly transported back to the last time you saw something like that? There's a picture of my first class beside my desk and I often think back to who they are. And can remember their small voices and how lucky I was to know them.
And then, there are pictures like this.
And suddenly.
I'm eight.
In third grade.
At Southampton Road School.
In Westfield, MA.
Staring at a very similar display on the back of Mrs. M's door.
Several boys are chuckling.
My face is hot.
I'm horrified.
Desperate to not start crying.
"I guess we don't really have to guess who that one is?"
"Don't you have any real baby pictures?"
The burning hot tears are poking the back of my eyeballs.
But I turn to laugh with them, "Nope. Guess I'll be the easiest one of all."
"Wait, you really don't have any baby pictures?"
"She's adopted," my sweet friend responded.
I was doing my best to disappear at the moment.
So I returned to the yellow sheet of paper where we were all guessing who was who.
"I'm number 12. In case anyone didn't know," I said writing my own name down.
That night, I'd go home, as so many nights before, and scrub my skin.
Until it was red, and the bath water dark.
I'd brush my hair until it was matted and stuck down.
And I'd wish more than anything in the entire world that I could just disappear.
Into some void.
And never be known again.
I know you, yes, you, sweet teacher, did not intend to make me feel this way.
I doubt you considered that among my 24 white peers, this wasn't much of a game for me.
Or that not having any baby photos - not existing in anyone's memory before 2 and 1/2 was, until meeting my birth mother in my 30's, one of my single greatest triggers and deepest sadnesses I'd ever know.
The earliest photos of my brown earthy skin and curly locks has me in blue overalls and almost three.
We do, as students, spend far too much time trying to fit in.
Long hair.
Straight hair.
The perfect bun.
The right clothes.
Most of it out of our control.
When I began teaching in my own classroom, I knew I'd never put ANY of my students in this situation - simply - by not creating it.
My goal in my classroom is to create a family.
A beautiful, colorful, unique family.
Valuing each piece of all us.
Not pointing out differences.
Not highlighting it.
Embracing it.
Celebrating it.
Loving it.
Skip the Who's that Baby?
I don't know that you need a substitute. Something else to do.
Choose to see your students for who they are now.
Not what baby photo they can find.
I have a dear colleague who asked a very honest, and serious question, "Genuinely, if all my students are of the same ethnicity, does this still apply?"
"If you have to ask," I offered, "that's your gut answering YES."
When I was 30, I traveled to Santiago, Chile, my birth country and met my mother and sister. In the depths of healing for both of us, she offered this photo. And I thought then, as I do now, I wouldn't have wanted to share this with my class either. This is Macarena Del Pilar, before she was adopted - before she was Jami Lyn.
This is me.
Who's that baby?
A teacher.
A partner.
A friend.
A learner.
A leader.
Loved.
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