December, 2006
There is a saying that states “one bad experience often overshadows ten good ones.” Unfortunately, this is so true to life; bad experiences and pain tend to linger longer in our minds than joys and feelings of content. Sometimes one bad experience can make one leery and anxious when similar circumstances arise. If one bad experience can have such an impact on an adult, how much more would several bad experiences have an impact on impressionable children?
I thought of this question after I had the pleasure of experiencing a painful rejection for no apparent reason. I received a phone call from a woman looking for a math tutor for her daughter and she had come across my website. She explained that she was having difficulty finding someone who could tutor her daughter in honors geometry, in particular, one who could handle writing geometric proofs. I understood her dilemma since I have heard the same story from other parents; few tutors want to tackle proofs. I reassured her that I would be able to help her daughter since I taught honors geometry the year before and also since I specialized in geometry while working on my doctorate in applied mathematics. She was thrilled and eager to get started so she set up an appointment with me. The mother was ecstatic, wanting me to meet with her daughter immediately since her daughter had a quiz/test coming in the next couple of days.
The next day, her appointment day arrived. The daughter called to let me know she was on her way but was running late due to major traffic problems. The mother arrived at my home before the daughter and promptly asked if her daughter had yet arrived. I invited her in as I explained that her daughter called saying she was running a few minutes late. The mother came inside reluctantly, but I paid little attention to her hesitation. I proceeded to give her my “welcome packet” detailing my expectations from the students and the parents and what clients could expect from me. I did not bother giving her my credentials since as I stated, “I guess you already know all about me since you found me on my website.” It was about this time, I noticed that the mother’s face had lost color and was showing great concern. As soon as I had quit speaking, the mother quickly stated that it had been such a rough week due to the holidays approaching and that she would just wait for her daughter outside and … she’ll call me. She quickly left and waited on the sidewalk looking intently at each approaching car.
My middle daughter arrived home shortly after the women had gone outside. My daughter came inside stating that there was a strange woman staring “very hard” into the car as she drove up. Eventually, the mother left and as to be expected from her behavior I never heard from her again.
Late that night I kept replaying that incident over and over again in my head. I kept reexamining the visions of the woman’s face in my head trying to figure out what she could have been thinking. Each time I had ruled out the possibility of my personal appearance being offensive; after she had left, I had looked in the mirror to check my appearance. I had also checked the foyer of my home to ensure there were no toddler toys lying around and that was clean. I also tried to ascertain if my demeanor was any less inviting/friendly than it had been with my previous hundreds of clients. I was completely unsettled with uncertainty and shock. I had never experienced anyone running out of my house like I had a plague before.
I had become accustomed to “double takes” and “surprised looks” when I opened the door for many new clients. I was accustomed to my clients being surprised to see a 6’1” black woman standing at the door, as opposed to a white or Chinese one (my married name is a common Chinese name so Asians always expect me to be Chinese). So I expected shock, but never had I expected “fleeing.”
It was an extremely painful rejection. I was not even given five minutes to show my capabilities or lack of thereof. Additionally, the rejection was even more painful after I remembered that the woman’s daughter had a quiz/test the following day and the woman had already mentioned that she could not find another capable tutor to help her daughter with proofs. I kept thinking, “How awful is that? Despite being desperate, she still didn’t see giving me a chance to prove my ability was worth even a few minutes.” I kept thinking about how she went from ecstatic eagerness to fear and anxiety in several seconds upon arrival and I had yet done nothing.
Although that night was a painful one for me, what really struck me was the anxiety I felt the following week when another new student arrived. I had great anxiety despite the fact that I had tutored hundreds of students with no incident save a few surprised stares. I was amazed at how nervous and concerned I was, despite the logical reasoning running through my head - “I’ve never had someone walk out before and the odds were it wouldn’t happen again for years to come and it’s illogical to be worried.” Nevertheless, despite my calm reassurances to myself, I grew more anxious as the time approached for my student to arrive; Inwardly, I felt that I was beside myself.
My apprehension reminded me of my kids’ apprehension to dogsit again after my two oldest were handcuffed and told to lie prostrate by the local police. A short time ago, a neighbor called the police on them when they went to feed another neighbor’s dog; the police came through house and bursted into the back yard and as my kids were playing with the dog in the back yard. The police handcuffed my kids and instructed them lie prostrate while questioning my children about their purpose for being in the home and while calling the owner of the home. The emergency number to call the owner was on the instruction sheet lying on the kitchen counter. This came as a shock to us since they have been raking leaves, mowing, dog sitting, house sitting in our neighborhood for years. We thought the whole neighborhood knew us. And although we laughed at the fact that the dogs were licking the faces of my children while they were on the ground, it shook us all up. It took a while before my third child wasn’t afraid to walk in our neighborhood. I have to admit that I too was a little nervous whenever I would take one of my kids to a dog-sitting job. I couldn’t help but be afraid that another neighbor would call the police on us and a police officer may come and handcuff us and put our faces to the ground, although I outwardly laughed at the idea.
Due to these two incidents, I now had a heart-felt understanding of how one bad incident makes a huge difference in one’s actions and thoughts despite the hundreds of happy events that occurred beforehand. I then thought about young, impressionable, black kids, particularly those in lower income areas, who have to deal with many bad incidents. I thought about the fact that they have to deal with people having low expectations/opinions of them on a daily basis. I felt poorly because one person didn’t believe enough in me to allow me to show my talent and I am middle aged and yet that lack of trust affected me deeply. I wondered how I would have felt if I were a child? What if I were a child and most/all of my teachers didn’t believe in me enough to allow me to show my talent? What if the only images I daily saw on television were constant reminders that society representing millions of people didn’t believe enough in me? How would I behave? How much hope would I have? How much would I demonstrate the talent that I did have? Would I be quick to become an academic star in my classroom? I thought of some strong-willed children that may fight to prove their worth, but I believe the majority of children just simply do not have that fight within them and/or they merely trust their older and “wiser” leaders to know the truth and would simply believe that they are not capable.
So that night as I thought about all of those impressionable children, I cried. I cried thinking about all of the little kids who all start out sweet, innocent, and with big dreams (big considering what little exposure they have to anything outside of their community) and about how those kids grow up to be without hope and to expect nothing more than basketball or low skilled jobs. I thought back to a statement made by an accomplished black doctor who came to speak to a gymnasium of motivated, black students and their parents. He said what frustrated him the most about our society is they seem to think
“Kids in the ghettos come out of the womb with Uzis. If you asked anyone of those kids in kindergarten what they want to be when they grow up, they’ll say they want to be a policeman or a doctor or a teacher. If you come back just a few years later and ask those same kids what they want to be when they grow up, you would see the sparkle has left their eyes and they will tell you they don’t know what they want to be.”
I related to his statement having seen so many lifeless and hopeless eyes and so little expectations of themselves even in my own family where there is much encouragement. I cried for a while but then I decided that there has to be another civil rights movement. We need another movement that changes expectations not just laws. We need a new movement … a group of people to offer hope to all of those little black kids and who will expect more out of them. I don’t want another black person to be assumed ignorant and incapable of being gifted at math.
I went to sleep knowing that I had the “pleasure” of being rejected because it gave me perspective and another reason to further my cause. Because of my family’s trials, I was reminded that I must stay the course that God laid out for me to free the minds of my people. No, we are no longer physical slaves and we no longer have written laws to hurt us, but we are still enslaved by the low expectations of others and most importantly by the low expectations of ourselves. This has to change and this is the new civil rights movement.!
October, 2009 update
Since I wrote this article, years ago, I have gained a couple of more insights. First I have witnessed how greatly teachers and peers affect students despite great parental influence. I have watched my middle child, who does not share the same fight as her older two siblings, become like a deflated balloon as she encountered many low/negative opinions of her abilities. Her teachers and peers, even friends, have insulted her greatly and unfortunately she does not react as her siblings did to the same comments/experiences. For years, I have watched how she performs very well when her teachers treat her with respect and admiration and how she is completely unmotivated (won’t study or do homework) when her teachers appear to dislike her or not believe in her. I have watched how her apprehensions cripple her. She will not seek assistance from her teacher or from the other staff members since she trusts no one. Experiences such as school librarians assuming she is the guilty party making the “noise” as opposed to her loud Asian friends sharing the table with her prevent her from trusting the adults at the school. Therefore she will not ask for assistance in anything. Comments like, “Can you imagine a black person being in this class trying to learn this material?” in classroom discussions or “The only reason you are in honors classes is because you are part Chinese!” make her grades plummet in those classes. Despite the encouragement received at home, my daughter developed very low opinions of her abilities and refused to believe that she was gifted. She only started to believe her parents’ opinions of her when she received the highest possible score on the AP Calculus BC exam and recently realized how well she performed compared to seniors on the SAT as a sixth grader. Only then did she realize that “she just maybe gifted “and it is not just her parents’ biased opinion.
My experiences with my middle daughter reminded me of the many black kids I knew in high school who hated their teachers and would “show them” by not doing any of the work. I was never really successful at convincing my friends that they were only hurting themselves and could actually be helping the teachers succeed in hurting my friends (assuming my friends were correct in their feelings about the teachers). My experiences also gave me a greater understanding of why the vast majority of my college-educated black friends forfeited sending their children to very good, white schools as opposed to not-so-good mixed and even poor-black schools. I can now see that my middle daughter would have gained more from her experiences at less high-performing schools than she did at her current school. Also, after considering the research of about the experiences of successful gifted, black students, considering the experiences of myself, my friends, and my students, I see the great importance of ensuring gifted minorities are around their academic peers who are also more like themselves. Although, admittedly a child’s personality is also a factor in his/her success, I believe exposure to minority academic peers would provide much of the needed support for all gifted minority children, despite the personality.
Other insights I have gained relate to the experiences of other minorities, in particular, Native Americans and Polynesians. One of my two best friends, a Latino Native American, is quick to remind me that her children have fewer role models than my kids. She also complains about how there are black colleges to help black kids but there are no Latino colleges and “certainly no Native American colleges.” That reality hit me like a ton of bricks. Since hearing her complaints, I have become more sensitive to the struggles of other minorities and have realized just how much we share the same struggles. I have observed that knowledge of Latino American history is worse than that of black history, which is scary since very few in the US seem to know much about black history except maybe about Martin Luther King Jr. and Sojourner Truth. I also noticed that there are very few role models, particularly in the field of mathematical sciences, in the Native American community and as of yet I haven’t been able to find a single role model in the Polynesian community. So as one can guess, my heart truly goes out to the other minorities, in particular, to the Native American and Polynesian people who truly share the same plight as blacks and additionally also have less structured programs to encourage their kid to strive for greater.
I.e., my mission has expanded! :)
