Elementary Elenamary

The elementary school I attended for Kindergarten, L.O. Donald, in Dallas, Texas, as I recall had three kindergarten classes. One was for monolingual Spanish speaking students, one was for monolingual English speaking students and one was for bilingual Spanish and English speaking students. I was in the English speaking class. My father had requested they put me in the bilingual class but the request was denied. I remember running during lunch and recess to the bilingual teachers classroom and talking with her and her students in Spanish. I missed speaking Spanish in school.

After kindergarten graduation (I’ll look for the picture of 5 year-old me in cap and gown) we moved back to Mexico and I completed about one-third of first grade in Taxco. We moved again back to the United States, but this time to Ohio. I started classes the day before thanksgiving break.

My new first grade class at Barrington Elementary, was having a Thanksgiving celebration. I was seated between two girls and across from a girl named Molly. The Mollys kept asking me if I liked Turkey and mashed potatoes. I left my first day of school in Ohio thinking that all white people were named Molly and obsessed with Turkey.

While I had gone to school in the United States before, I had gone to school in a primarily poor, urban, majority Latino school. This new school was suburban, wealthy and Anglo. It was not however the first time I felt that I didn’t fit in. In Dallas, I was the only in my kindergarten class who was bilingual. I was the only one that could read. I was the only one that didn’t get free lunch. I was white and my dad was white. My mom and dad were the classroom parents and helped organize the class parties.

In Ohio everyone was white. No one spoke Spanish. I had never (as far as I could recall) celebrated Thanksgiving. When I was 9 or 10 I was watching Growing Pains and I felt really bad for the children in the family. I asked my mother, if the mother could understand them even though she wasn’t Mexican? Could the talk to each other? It wasn’t as if I hadn’t realized that other kids had white moms, it as all the kids in my class had white moms. I had just never thought about their relationships with their mothers. I felt bad for them, my mom is awesome.

I’ve been thinking about this all day after comparing my elementary school in Dallas, Texas to my school in Upper Arlington (suburb of Columbus), Ohio at the webpage School Matters. Below I am including a pie chart and some basic stats on my two elementary schools. The comparisons are at two amazing extremes. We are not a melting pot.