A Classroom Flashback

Today in class, Mr. Salituro started a clip about the documentary, "A Classroom Divided." We only got through a couple minutes, but right before our bell rang, the teacher, Mrs. Elliot began to explain the activity to her third grade class and she said, "Blue-eyed people are the better people in this room." She then went on to explain just how inferior brown-eyed people were. I had this immediate flashback to my third grade class. We had been studying a unit on civil rights and on this particular day, my teacher, Miss Hartigan, read us a book about Rosa Parks. After she finished, she asked us what we thought about it. Once we had all responded she said, "What if these bad things happened to you just because you had blue eyes?" I remember that my stomach sank and my face got flushed. I thought, "Wait, I have blue eyes, that wouldn't be fair, its not my fault that my eyes are the color that they are!" That one sentence of hers drastically changed my view, even at age eight it had a tremendous impact. She didn't end up putting us through Mrs. Elliot's experiment, she actually went silent and excused us to recess. I don't think she realized the influence she had on my little mind. My parents had always preached "Love your neighbor as yourself," but because of Miss Hartigan, I began to take those words and make them a part of my own values. I started to think about how we don't chose our features and the character of a person isn't dependent on our outward appearance. (Although, my little third grade mind probably didn't use so many big words!). It has been almost ten years and that one sentence still breaks my heart, and I hope that it never stops.