Member-only story
World Peace… One Person at a Time
I’m on a quest to help achieve world peace, one person at a time.
This journey began in the fall of 1986. I was a new teacher in Los Angeles, hired on an “emergency” credential due to a teacher shortage throughout California. My assignment was at elementary school in the San Fernando Valley section of the city and it was a 5th/6th grade split.
A “split” class means that you have students in your classroom from two different grade levels, each requiring their own lessons, instructions, experiences, and curriculum separate from the other. That first year I had 30 fifth graders and 8 sixth graders. A split isn’t easy no matter what the grade levels and numbers are, but as a new teacher it was overwhelming for me.
The sixth grade students all knew each other from previous years at the school. And interestingly enough, they had all arrived in America from another country while they were very young. My boys were from Spain, India, Ghana, and Vietnam, while the girls hailed from Pakistan, Israel, Korea, and Mexico. I had been to Mexico many times by then and also spoke Spanish almost fluently, yet I knew little of the culture. The same was true of the other five countries and I convinced myself this would make little difference as their classroom teacher. I was wrong.
