Service Learning and Identity

When we discussed the MacIntosh article and the article about culture today, I kept thinking about my race in relation to the race of my students, in both my pre-school classroom and my Sunday school classroom. All of the children in my pre-school class are black and even in kids as young as three and four it is easy to tell that their culture at home is very different than mine. I stick out like a sore thumb. I was thinking about the way parents look at me when they come to pick up their kids. Sometimes its sort of a look like, why on earth do you come all the way over here to teach our kids, like I only do it because I feel sorry for them. It would be much easier for me to develop relationships with the parents if I did not look like a white girl from the suburbs.
In my Sunday school class, my students are either Hispanic or Asian. I teach at a tri-lingual church. English is a second language for most of my students and they attend big public schools. I have always gone to a private school and I speak spanish, but I'm not quite fluent yet. It took me a while to understand that in the Asian culture children are taught to be reverent, listen and internalize. It was such a challenge to get my students to speak up in class. It has also been a challenge trying to get the children of different cultures to mingle. Slowly but surely they are warming up to me.