What strikes you as most important to you as a teacher in reading about Beliefs, Values and Attitudes?

What is the most important thing that you have learned?

When I first began to read the essay, I felt a great disconnect to the writing on the pages. The material was good, but I kept thinking to myself, “What is so important about this information?” What makes it relevant? I was concentrating so hard on answering these one dimensional questions that I didn’t give myself the opportunity to take in all that the essay had to offer. But coming home by bus one day made me realize how truly pertinent this information is to my personal life and as an educator. I was standing on the corner of 183rd street and 27th avenue waiting for the bus when a little boy approached me. Slightly thin and much shorter than me, he seemed to be of elementary school age. Hearing him speak to his mother on my cell phone confirmed that his ethnicity was that of Haitian American. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Well, when the young boy first came up to me I was quite skeptical of his intentions. I was standing in the middle of a notoriously bad neighborhood, dressed in formal work attire, and feeling seriously out of place. The little boy had decided to approach me in hopes I had a cell phone he could use. I looked him up and down through squinted eyes and after what seemed like an eternal pause decided to help him out. I took out my phone cautiously and dialed the number for him. I only handed him the phone once I heard a ringing on the other end. Why was I acting so untrustworthy? He was just a little boy. What I came to realize was that even though I understood this fact logically, logically wasn’t how I was seeing him or the situation. Instead of seeing a little boy, I saw a potential threat. And to make matters worse I believe his ethnicity, along with his age, may have played a prejudicial role in how I reacted. I never once considered myself prejudice. That is up until that fateful day waiting for the bus. Till I looked into the eyes of a little boy and instead of feeling nurturing towards him, I felt as if my life were being threatened. I hadn’t meant to judge him in that manner. The media has a way of getting under people’s skin. I don’t watch a lot of news, but what I am able to catch is usually riddled with misbehaving youths and new forms of breaking the law. When I first laid eyes on him I didn’t see a little boy, I saw a young hoodlum in the making. All I could think about was why come up to me? What are your true intentions? When I consciously realized my thought process, two things came to mind: 1) I was completely aghast at how I was thinking and behaving and 2) I realized how easy it is to be prejudice. I also considered how differently I may have reacted if a White or Latin child would have come up to me instead. The media covers all people, but some of the more recent coverage has dealt with unruly youths. And it always seems that the more boisterous groups are usually of African or Haitian American descent. Or maybe that is just what the media wants to portray. However, it gives me no right to see this little boy or any other person of any other ethnicity as a threat. At the beginning I tried to reason that I was just being cautious, but there is a major difference between caution and prejudice. And that is one mistake I am not willing to make again. What I learned from the reading is that our beliefs are created and fortified not only by our experiences, but also by the experiences of others that we choose to internalize. And even though there are some things in this world that we haven’t experienced ourselves firsthand, we hold to be true the accounts of others. It’s easy to be prejudice. The hard part is letting go of all of those irrational thoughts disguising themselves as truth.