Changing Times

This Tuesday, I helped a girl write a thesis statement. It was pretty much pulling teeth with her, she did not trust anything I said! Her prompt was a two part prompt, and she was only answering one of the parts, and she kept thinking that because she had never done her other thesis statements like this one, that I was wrong. So, we pulled out all her other prompts and I had her underline and number each statement she was supposed to answer. Sure enough, all her other prompts only had one statement to be addressed, and this one had two.

As she finally began to trust me, and after she had written a wonderful thesis, we began talking. As tutors in the AVID program, we are supposed to encourage the kids to go to college, so we talked a little about that, and then I asked her if she lived with her mom and dad, just to get a better backgorund on her. She then told me that she had two mommies, and that she was adopted. It took me a minute to realize what she meant by two mommies, and then I realized that her moms were homosexual. I had never encountered something like this, and I was very interested. I asked her how she felt about that, and she said she did not like it sometimes because she did not like being different than her friends. I assured her that being different is always a good thing and that her particurlar situation makes her special and allows her to expierience things that other students would never be able to expierience.

I cannot wait until the day when racial and sexual orientation stigmas disappear and kids can just be themselves and learn in a prejudice free enviroment.