My junior American Literature class is reading Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson. If you haven't read it, you should, it's much more complex than the usual Twain's you read in school, and I think if we read this instead everyone would be a lot smarter. Thanks to my mom for the suggestion.
As part of our discussion today, the KKK was brought up. I started to share with the class a story my mom told me. The year before she started school, her parents took her and my aunt to a KKK meeting, in the mountains of NC where they lived. My mom still doesn't know why they did it, but she thinks it was to show them how crazy those people were. The meeting was outside, and they parked on a hill above it so they could still hear, but they kept the doors locked and stayed in the car. My mom remembers seeing a teacher, who had taught several of her cousins, speaking to the crowd and saying that she would never teach those n****rs. This was when the schools were finally going to be desegregated. She transferred to another school.
As I told my class this, I warned them I was going to get emotional and I did, tearing up, voice cracking. I said that especially now that I'm a teacher, it just hurts me so much to think that a teacher could say that about any children. I'm getting teary again typing this, but I am an overly-sensitive soul.
This class tries me a lot, there are several strong, defiant personalities who like to push their teachers. While I was talking they were looking at me half surprised, half awed. Maybe they'd never seen a teacher get so emotional before, unless they were yelling at them. Whatever it was, I knew that they saw that I cared about these issues, and maybe understood me a little bit more. Usually you don't want your kids to see you get emotional, but in this case I think it helped.
After this, they had a quick writing assignment, and all completed it eagerly. One thanked me. Success.
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