Reflection on Identity Day

As I reflect upon this year, I am very thankful for all that life has brought me to and through.  This year has been a whirlwind of activities.   I've kept busy organizing meetings, dealing with situations, completing necessary paperwork, then teaching, presenting at meetings and conferences, and serving as an officer of our Professional Development Committee. Some days I feel like I am not performing to the best of my abilities... but don't we all feel that way sometimes?

This time last year, our assistant principal implemented Identity Day.  The premise of the activity was to depict yourself in a display that showed others how you identify yourself and your passions. I created a poster with pictures of my various art projects: pencil portraits, paintings, jewelry, knitted scarves and hats, costumes, etc.  These are some of my passions, but not really my identity.  My identity is much deeper and makes me who I am as an adult.

The idea of identity was further compounded by a required Poverty Simulation put on by our district. The simulation brought back many memories from my life and caused me to truly reflect on who I am and why I am... my identity.

I believe if we all take a little time to get to know each other (as well as our students) we might look at them in a different light.  This follows right along with the idea of the Single Story that I have shared at various trainings and conferences. I want to share a little about who I am and what has led me to become who I am as a person and educator.


I was born in Caldwell, Idaho to a mother who was just barely 16 (July to October) and a father who had just turned 17.  Mom was the middle child of nine - 7 girls and 2 boys.  My father was the middle child of three boys.  I was unexpected and unwanted, but in those days, you did the honorable thing and married.  My mother's family was very poor, they had lived much of their lives as migrant farm workers or sharecroppers.  My father's family were farmers.  For mom, marriage was an escape from a life of great hardship.

My parents moved into my father's family home.  We stayed with them while dad finished high school. After graduating, dad got a job and we moved into a housing complex.  One of my first memories was of my grandma stopping by our apartment (in the 1960s) and becoming very irate because she found me and our neighbor, a little black girl, sitting in the wading pool she had gotten me.  I remember crying and telling her I didn't care if she was not white like me, she was my friend. Not long afterward, dad and I moved to Missouri with my grandparents.  My mother joined us soon after.

In Missouri, my parents worked the migrant farm circuit.  Dad harvested crops and mom worked in the kitchens.  We did this for several years.  I spent many of my days in the kitchen with other younger children.  Grandma had bought me a set of magnetic letters and I would make words on the refrigerator and play school with the other kids.  By the time I started kindergarten, I was already reading and writing, but my teachers did not know this.  We moved about ten times during that school year.  By the time I would start to fit in, it was time to move on.  It is hard to make connections and build relationships when you know you won't be there long.  I learned how to be alone.

We were extremely poor.  I remember going to the camp store with my mother one day and seeing cases upon cases of dog food.  I saw one of my friends and her family buying dog food and was excited thinking they had gotten a dog.  When I asked my mom she told me that it was not for a dog, it was for them.  I am fairly certain this was the nasty meat in the hash dish momma often cooked for us.

My mother made our clothes.  Back in those days, flour and other things came in bags and some of them had pretty prints on them.  Many of these bags became my dresses.  Grandma would buy me shoes and socks, on birthdays and other such holidays.  I remember having to wear shoes to kindergarten that were too small and my feet hurting.  I was, however, always clean and well-kept.

When I was in first grade my family settled in a small town.  My parents worked in restaurants as a cook and waitress while my father also attended the police academy.  He later became a police officer, a profession he embraced for over 30 years.  My mother got a job in the town's liquor store which she eventually owned several years later.  We became a 'real' family.

As a child, you do not always understand the dynamics of what is going on in your family.  My mother and father worked a lot.  My mother's sister moved in and lived with us.  I recall they went out dancing and socialized often in the evenings.  I remember watching television shows like The Brady Bunch and Leave it to Beaver and wondering if families were actually like that.  Ours was not a home filled with such conversation and laughter.

The summer before I started second grade, the neighbor children were at our house playing.  We were playing hide and seek, chasing each other through the downstairs in and out of the many doors.  My mother was in the kitchen frying chicken for dinner.  She had yelled several times for us to stop running through the house, but being kids, we didn't.  Just as she was carrying a bowl of fresh from the pan steaming hot chicken gravy from the kitchen to the table, I ran in front of the door.  My mom threw the bowl into the air. The bowl overturned above me dumping its contents down my front.

I received first and second-degree burns to my face as the gravy slid down to my chest.  The gravy that rested on my chest and thigh caused second and third-degree burns.  I screamed with pain.  My mother stood there scolding me for running in the house.  My father came running from the other room, ripped off my gravy-covered clothes, and told mom to call 911.  The ambulance was taking too long, so, my dad rushed me to the city hospital in our family car.

At the hospital, the nurses were insistent about filling out paperwork and took far too long.  Then it was discovered that a doctor was not available.  My dad had an ambulance rush me to a hospital in a larger nearby city.  By this time, I was in shock.  I remember flashes of doctors and bandages and severe pain.  When I next woke, I was at my grandma's house.  I stayed there for several weeks while the situation was evaluated by family services.

When I first looked in a mirror I cried, and the salt of my tears made the pain even worse.  I slept a lot.  I smelled awful.  I felt ugly.  Eventually, the bandages came off, but the scars remained, both inward and outward.  I did not want to be seen.  We discovered that I had keloid scars.  My body produces excess scar tissue that causes raised purplish scars.  I began monthly treatments which involved a series of thirty to forty shots into the scar itself to help it shrink.

As a young adult, I was very conscious of the scars.  I felt that I would never be wanted or as pretty as other girls.  It was also during this time that my parents divorced.  It was a terrible divorce.  My parents fought bitterly and my brother, sister, and I suffered because of it.  I withdrew into books and devoted myself to my studies.  School was my escape.  When not at school, I was home caring for my brother and sister while my mother worked.

I excelled in school.  I loved learning.  In the summers I made weekly trips to the library to learn even more. I found that questions about everything from maturing to dealing with divorce could be answered in books. I also discovered that I could escape to other worlds in a book and did so often.  My mother, in the meantime, had retreated into depression and sought comfort in drugs and alcohol. Her temper was short.  She frequently told me that I looked too much like my father and she couldn't stand to see me.  So, I chose to read in my room when she was at home.

My mother remarried, they had two sons and mom miscarried a girl.  My stepfather was not a nice man and they divorced after a few years.  Before they divorced, my stepdad decided that I should stop seeing my boyfriend and date one of his friends.  My mother gave me an ultimatum- date who they felt I should, go live with my father, or get married.  I chose to get married, and she chose to stop speaking to me.  I was married my entire senior year of high school.  Eventually, my brother and sister came to stay with me before graduating and moving out on their own.

I was married for 22 years.  The first years were good, but later his true self was revealed.  He suffered from bipolar disorder.  As a high school student, he was athletic, but as he grew older, he gained quite a bit of weight and became insecure, suspicious, and abusive.  He was raised to believe that women were created to serve their husbands and keep their homes.  I did not mind caring for a home and later a family, but his insecurities caused him to isolate us from the world outside of the church.  After I became a teacher, he became jealous of my obligations at school and even more abusive.  When his abuse carried over to our children, I knew I needed to be strong enough to end it and we divorced.

I was alone for several years before meeting my current husband.  It is difficult to meet new people when you don't know how.  A couple of years after we married, my husband discovered that he was diabetic.  His doctor at that time told him that he had ten years to live if he lived carefully, that was fifteen years ago.  He is now a type 1 diabetic and does not like being alone. We spend our available time together watching movies, playing games, and enjoying the time we have.  He is usually asleep by 9:00 each evening so I devote my evenings to social media and schoolwork.

My husband says I am a kid magnet because they seem to seek me out when we are in public. I have never had trouble talking to children.  It feels like I have always been a teacher.  I am honestly most at home working with my students.  However, life has made me an introvert around other adults.  I have to make an intentional effort to have conversations with my peers.

My online presence has allowed me to connect with peers, an opportunity I never had before.  Because of this, I am becoming more comfortable sharing and communicating with others.  Because of this, I have shared with you part of my story.