365 Days Of Love. Day 40

I teach the most amazing students in the world. I will stand by that statement until the day I die. The kids in Roma are beautiful, so very beautiful.

I asked my 8^th period to write an essay answering this question, “If you could change anything about the school, what would it be and why?” Many of my students had thoughtful responses, but one was special, special because it initiated a unified reaction from the whole class. Special because it had nothing to do with uniforms or school lunch or acrylic nails, it had only to do with character.

Roxy is 14 years old. She’s tall, her face is dotted with middle school induced pimples, and she’s not a size 0.

Roxy, though, emits beauty. When she smiles, which isn’t often, my heart begs to escape through my rib cage and encourage her to never ever stop smiling. To preserve the integrity of Roxy’s response to my question, I’m going to record it exactly. Please don’t hold the grammatical errors against her, please don’t let them distract your eyes from the content of her essay.

I would like to change a lot of things about school that I don’t like. The thing about school that I don’t like is the fact that some students discriminate other students just by the fact that they are intelligent, they are colored, or that they are not that pretty. They think that only because they are pretty they can have everything they want in the world. I think that intelligent students are very good students that don’t need to be discriminated just because the fact that they are “nerds” how people call. They should be treated as equal as everyone else. The discriminality between students should not be tolerated in schools or anywhere else. There is no reason to be discriminative to others just because of their personality. They, the principals, should not tolerate this in schools. They need to be very careful because when you are not watching those kind of things happen.

After each student responded, they traded papers with other students and that student had to agree or disagree with the initial argument and offer support to defend his or her opinion. Brittany responded to Roxy, this is what she said

I agree with you because all that you said it true theres a lot of girls in this school. I don’t like to call names but I am pretty sure you know who they are. Not only girls but most of them are the boys, by the way being “a nerd” it would be awesome because you can be someone in life. I don’t care if people are ugly or not but the most important thing is how you are, like some of the people’s attitude I like and one of them is you. What you said about the principal is great even I want that to happen.

At the end of class, I read some of the essays aloud. With 4 minutes of class left, meek Brittany said, “Roxy’s Roxy’s, Miiiisssss, read Roxy’s.” Roxy begged me to keep quiet. When I shook my head, refusing her plea, she buried her face in her sweater. I found the oversized bubbly handwriting I knew was her’s and I started reading it. The rest of the class was immediately engrossed. I held back tears as I read the essays of the two girls. When I read

By the way being “a nerd” it would be awesome because you can be someone in life.

there were a few “woots” and “hollas “ and Roxy peeked her head out of her sweater, surprised by the support of her classmates.

By the time I finished reading both responses, sweet Benito, who is definitely considered a leader in the “popular crowd” started clapping. The union of his hands turned into the union of everyone else’s hands and that turned into communion. The communion of 14 year olds rallying around the idea of acceptance based on character, not size or acne or even intelligence. Character.

Roxy and Brittany taught me that loving is seeking to know the character of others. Benito taught me that loving is encouraging those around you, unifying those around you.

I teach the most amazing students in the world. I will stand by that statement until the day I die. The kids in Roma are beautiful. So very beautiful.