#9: Ordinary

Last weekend, my husband and I listened to "Three Miles," a segment on This American Life. (I can't urge you enough to listen to this program, if not right now then as soon as possible!) Our political climate has been charged in the last few years with issues of race and class and immigration which are all so clearly laid out in this piece and impact the American education system in varied and complex ways. Similar to the students profiled, I am living proof of the impact on a child's life by the school attended which is connected to the location of one's home which is connected to the socio-economic mobility of one's family.

Like most elementary school kids, who are immigrants themselves or are the children of immigrants, I wanted nothing more as a child than to be ordinary. I wanted to blend into my elementary school and lead an average American life even though I really had no idea what that meant. So much of child psychology revolves around love and acceptance which can be more convoluted for an immigrant child, especially one as shy and quiet as I was, who had to find a way to acculturate and still retain her heritage. And, I knew I was far from ordinary.

When I entered Kindergarten at Dixon Elementary School, I didn't speak English, and it took years for my pronunciation and vocabulary to catch up to that of my peers. My father had worked very hard and scrimped and saved for years to finally move his children to the suburbs from the urban core where the education of my older sister and brother had come into question. However, my mother had just left home and never turned back. In the early 1970's, no one talked about divorce and I certainly didn't either. As a result, I assumed I was the only child from a broken home, particularly a single family home headed by a father with a sixth grade education. As the years passed, I figured out I was wrong about the prevalence of divorce but certainly not in error about how mothers dominated the custody scene.

Being raised by a working class immigrant father, my looks were never of great concern. My clothes were often hand sewn by my aunts or secondhand, and I took charge of my hair and personal cleanliness. I must have garnered a fair bit of attention in my affluent, suburban public school, particularly after I had to get glasses in the third grade and chose octagonal-shaped frames. I was also born with a cerebral cyst which caused a skull deformation on the right side of my head. No clothing or hairstyle would ever hide this fact. However, to be honest, I don't ever, EVER, remember being bullied or teased which would not have been a surprise given how different I was from everybody else. I can only surmise that I must have blocked it out over the years or been extremely good at ignoring the world around me in real time as I tried to blend into the background.

In part, I may also have benefited from being identified as "gifted." I remember being given the IQ test, I believe, in my first or second year of school which resulted in being shuttled off to GT (Gifted and Talented Class) a few times each week for supplemental, educational programming with Ms. Naven. GT allowed me to enter into a select, social group with status and led me down the path to college from nearly the first day I entered school until I graduated. College was never an option; it was expected and driven by my teachers. My intellect was nurtured until I was fully prepared to succeed in higher education such that my father soon believed, too, acquiesced, and financially supported me to the best of his ability.

My education also gave me two intangible and invaluable gifts: a sense of self worth and the ability to embrace the extraordinary. Children's self-perception is driven in large part by what the adults and environment tell them. I was identified as smart; thus, my intelligence was cultivated. So, I performed at a high level, and I came to believe I was smart. My intellectual abilities built my self esteem and slowly encouraged me to welcome the extraordinary, to accept myself for who I was in ways both ordinary and exceptional. Even though a college education was new to my family, I believed I deserved to go to college and would excel there.

I realize that the greatest injustice currently perpetuated and reinforced by our institutions is very simple: some individuals are worthy; some are not. Some are worthy of world class educations; some are not. Some are worthy of comprehensive, preventative health care; some are not. Some are worthy of justice; some are not. Of course, I could go on and on. Instead, I would like to suggest that perhaps opportunity and excellence ought to be ordinary. An outstanding public school education ought not be the exception but the rule. In fact, democracy demands we accept nothing less. If people are among our most important resources, then we must invest in each and every one until our highest standards become every day. And, as my elementary teachers best exemplified, believing remains the first and most important step in making the extraordinary ordinary.

Ordinary Life

Barbara Crooker

This was a day when nothing happened,
the children went off to school
without a murmur, remembering
their books, lunches, gloves.
All morning, the baby and I built block stacks
in the squares of light on the floor.
And lunch blended into naptime,
I cleaned out kitchen cupboards,
one of those jobs that never gets done,
then sat in a circle of sunlight
and drank ginger tea,
watched the birds at the feeder
jostle over lunch's little scraps.
A pheasant strutted from the hedgerow,
preened and flashed his jeweled head.
Now a chicken roasts in the pan,
and the children return,
the murmur of their stories dappling the air.
I peel carrots and potatoes without paring my thumb.
We listen together for your wheels on the drive.
Grace before bread.
And at the table, actual conversation,
no bickering or pokes.
And then, the drift into homework.
The baby goes to his cars, drives them
along the sofa's ridges and hills.
Leaning by the counter, we steal a long slow kiss,
tasting of coffee and cream.
The chicken's diminished to skin & skeleton,
the moon to a comma, a sliver of white,
but this has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.