As part of a reflection on Father's Day, my dad sent a message to my sister and me late Sunday night (well technically it was early Monday morning since it was after midnight, which is typical for him) telling us what he thought to be the best thing about being a dad. In his message, he told us about an exercise he used to complete with his students where he would ask them if they could only choose one, would they choose to be understood or accepted. He went on to share that, while most started out by saying that they would choose to be understood, the majority ended up changing their mind after a few strategic questions. He asked them if they thought that any white American can truly understand what it is like to be a black person in America or if any black American can truly understand what it is like to be a white person in America. He proceeded to tell them that he had two daughters and asked if he could truly understand what it is like for his daughters to face the problems and challenges in their lives that are shaped, in any way, by their sex. His final rhetorical question was this: "Do you think it's possible for a person who is not the same race as another to accept that person if he/she does not understand that person's life experience, and do you think that a father can accept his daughters even if he does not fully understand what it is like to grow up female?"
Our classrooms are extremely diverse and are made up of students who come from very different backgrounds with different needs, strengths, dreams, perspectives, likes, dislikes, personalities.... just DIFFERENT. Our teachers cannot possibly understand everything about every child. The children cannot possibly understand everything about their teacher or about one another. However they can certainly make the choice to accept one another. I was struck by the words and phrases that I found in the Merriam-Webster definition of accept: receive willingly; give admittance or approval to; regard as proper, normal; to recognize as true: BELIEVE; make a favorable response to. Think about these words and phrases and then imagine what would happen in classrooms if every teacher truly accepted every student, if every student truly accepted every teacher and if every student truly accepted every other student. I am now thinking of the John Lennon's song Imagine and I really want to sing, but I am not at all good, so I will refrain.
Have you ever watched really young children playing in the park? They often have very few inhibitions with one another. They do not notice that children are different from themselves. They do not seem to care about gender, size, socioeconomic status, disabilities, hair color, clothing choices, or even language. They accept everyone around them and just want to play. The lack of acceptance and the detection of differences is something that is learned over time through society, family, school, and various forms of media. This is good news! We know that universal acceptance is a skill that our children and adults have, at one time, possessed.
I generally think of myself as an accepting person, but I am pretty certain that I was guilty a time or two (or twenty) during my teaching years of putting too much energy into trying to understand a child when I would have been better off to just accept him or her as they were. It happens, and it will happen. In fact, sometimes it needs to happen because there may be something that we really do need to understand about a child in order to help him or her. For the most part, however, I enjoy thinking about classrooms where we just accept children for who they are while creating learning opportunities that can be accessed by all of them. And then if we create opportunities for them to truly engage in dialogue about complex topics, they will actually learn a lot about one another as they learn together! They will begin to have some understanding AND acceptance!
