What's in Your Backpack?

"If you don't have any baggage                                                       then you don't have a pulse."                                                                              Ilyana Vanzant                         

I wonder.......

     Who are you? What are you carrying with you in your backpack. Where did you come from? What made you the person you are today? What defined you as a person, and did it really define you?

     In one of our very first Social Studies class, we did a Cultural Backpack activity. This activity consisted of each of us taking some time to think about what we carried around that is not always apparent to everyone else. We were asked to think back to our childhood, and try and remember who we were at that time. We specifically were asked to answer the question.....

Who was your 5th grade self?

     We were to come to the next class loaded with an outline of who we were in 5th grade. It was to be a simple bullet outline using key words that described who we were at that time. We were given an outline of a backpack as a visual to use and told we could make our list directly on the outline if we wished, as we could ask our 5th grade students to do.

Again, easy task right? Again, wrong answer.

     We knew that once this outline was finished, we would be asked to write it on the board for the entire class to view....and possibly judge.....That alone evoked feelings of vulnerability in myself. My classmates, who have become my very good friends, know only what I have chosen to let them know about me. Some more than others, but mainly they know the current "me" and not who I was in my past. No one, however knew who my 5th grade self was. (Even I had trouble remembering that far back. It was a challenge to put myself back in my 5th grade mind and remember.)

     Below is a snapshot of my Cultural Backpack, which is next to my friend Krystle's. It is easy to see that we are different, and each of us have very different things in our backpacks that we carried around with us throughout our school years. These backpack lists are only a snippet from our 5th grade selves.

     Again, the assignment hit pay dirt! The mission of teaching us preservice teachers to "think outside of the box," paid off. As we went around the room and viewed all of each others backpacks, we were amazed at what we found. Our classroom environment was established as a safe and supportive environment. It was clear to see this as we divulged a lot of our pasts that a lot of us did not know about, yet not one of us judged who we are now, and who we were in 5th grade. 

     I had not really thought about all that was happening in my life when I was in 5th grade. In reflection, I remember being judged by some of my teachers, not only in elementary, but in my high school as well. I was prejudged according to who my family was and what those before me had done. I remember hearing more than once in a discouraged and resigned tone "Oh, you're related to....? Oh....your brothers are Guy and Doug? Who are your cousins? etc...... I even heard "If you think I am going to put up with....like I did with your brothers and cousins...." Geesh, I was not them, and I knew right then and there, at that moment that the rest of my school year would be defined before my new teacher even knew me. Great!

     As I got older, I began to say back with a big grin, "Yep, they sure are my cousins and brothers and I would not have it any other way." (slight defiance, but I was proud to be related.)

Retrieved from pinterest.com

     Those teachers who chose to prejudge are forever defined in my eyes as narrow minded. Even then, as a student, I knew I was being prejudged, which set not only the course of their actions, but then mine as well. 

     As teachers, this needs to be at the forefront of our minds. We do not know our students as individuals based on just what we see, and think we know, or what we know about those that came before them. Sometimes we will see a bright and shiny new backpack.......

And sometimes we will see torn and worn backpacks.....

     Regardless of the condition, there is still a child and a student that is wearing that backpack that deserves our respect. They deserve to be viewed and known for who they are, not what their baggage may be. But until I as the teacher unpacks that backpack, shiny and new, or worn and torn, I will not know the whole student. Until I take into consideration all that my student comes from, deals with, and all that my student is, I will not know my student. I will not know their beliefs, or traditions, or even their personality. 

     If I as a teacher am not willing to accept the diversity of my students and do not create that safe and supportive environment where they can thrive and grow, I am doing them a great disservice. If I can not accept who they are and celebrate their differences, I can not know them and therefore can not teach the whole student.