While in Cherokee I experience many things for the first time in my life. One of these things has been especially thought provoking for me. This was the first time that I have ever been in a crowd of people, stopped to look around, and realized that everyone else looks like me. This realization was both peaceful and disconcerting for me. Despite studying this phenomenon from an academic perspective, I had never experienced it at a personal level. I grew up on the fringes in a small town in West Virginia where I learned that “my people” were those rough around the edges types with good hearts and bad names. Although I never explicitly learn that “my people” looked any certain way I did learn that how I looked mattered to those people that I considered mine.
In my life thus far my physical appearance has gotten me an identifiable amount of extra attention, both positive and negative. From being referred to as “sand nigger” growing up to being lavished with compliments on my “perfect complexion” and my “so dark they are almost black” eyes, there has always been a reason for me to be aware of my physical appearance.
I believe part of what was so comforting about looking around and seeing people who look like me was that, for the first time in my life, I didn’t stand out in the crowd because of my looks. I felt a lot more comfortable in other aspects of myself than I ever had before simply I didn’t feel like I had that “other” factor when I was in Cherokee. Instead of being noticed because I looked “exotic” (oh, the irony) I was noticed because of the things that I had to contribute.
If someone had presented me with a hypothetical question about how I would have felt in this situation before I encountered it, I would have guessed that my reaction would have been to blend contentedly in to the background. As an introvert by nature (not that most people would guess that about me) I have always been uncomfortable with the attention afforded to me because of my physical appearance. Second glances and comments, both the loud and obvious and the not-quite-quiet-enough, have always made me wish I could disappear.
What I found, however, was that my teacher’s passion, if you will, was stirred to the point of overriding my introverted nature. Essentially, my discomfort with new situations was overpowered by my recognition of an opportunity to learn and grow in ways that will help me teach and nurture others and promote peace, love, unity, and respect between all human beings.
What I have realized as I worked my way through my feelings on this topic is that each person, whatever their level of comfort is in a given situation, has something for which they are willing to step out of their safety zone. What motivates me to engage socially and contribute to my surroundings is not what motivates everyone but those distinctions are what makes humanity so beautiful. This has allowed me to recognize that my true job as a teacher is to open students up to discovering this for themselves, even if they have not yet identified their passion. Setting the foundational understandings of human interconnectedness and modeling peace, love, unity, and respect, both in my classroom culture and my curriculum development, is the most important contribution that I can make towards the creation of a better world.
