Exposed

Listening to the stories of others expands our world view because we often only have the opportunity to experience a very small part of the world and of what life can be like. The things that I have experienced are going to be different to some extent than every other person that I meet. If I don't listen to what they have to say and what they have experienced then I am limiting myself to only understanding and feeling what my past has been and looking at everything from that limited viewpoint.

An example of this is my view on education. Growning up I had never been exposed to some of the programs that are in place today in schools. I also wasn't exposed to the racial diversity that is present in Arizona schools. When I decided to go back to school to teach I still had the expectations of what I had been exposed to as a child. When I first stepped into a classroom at a title one school I was blown away and immediately I could see some of the difficulties faced by the students and the teachers and some major problems with our system. Talking with the students and teachers along with having the totally different experience in my childhood really allowed me a bigger picture view and got me involved with trying to change the way some of the programs are run in our schools as well as start putting together a program of my own. Without being exposed to these new stories and better understandings to build on I would have continued to go on thinking that schools were the same as when I was a kid.

I got a late start with community service. It just was never something I thought about when I was working 12 hour days and maintaining a household. I would do a walk for this or that now and then and felt like that covered my part of things. Then I came back to school and at about the some time a started working in the gradeschool classrooms. The double exposure of seeing so many of my friends being active in the community along with seeing the needs of many of the families at the school opened my eyes and made me realize how much I really did have to give. I saw the excitement a new box of crayons could bring to a child. What seems like such small things to me can be huge to someone who has never had a a door opened for them in life. I grew up in poverty like many of them but I got a break somewhere along the line. I hope someday my story says that I was able to give even one of these kids the break they deserve in life.