It’s a very exciting time in our lives.  We are moving.  We just bought our first home.  It’s not a big move, but it pushes us outside of city limits and into a new school district.  Arrrg!

As you can see I am hinting at the fact that I am not happy about changing my daughter’s school.  It was an arduous process choosing the one we are at, an alternative, parent co-op Charter School.  I spent years worrying, wondering and exploring options.  At one point I had hooked up with a group of moms ready to start their own school.  But parted ways in the middle of the process when I learned that our priorities were not aligned -they, pushing diversity lower on the list than I.  In the end I found a school filled with mostly like-minded families and mostly multiracial.

While there have been incidents that have caused sudden pain and premature growth around issues I was hoping to delay on, such as slavery, we are happy there.

And now, onto a new school, a much smaller charter school, and nearly all white.  How do we decide our priorities?  Do we continue renting when we can own, just so our children can attend a more multiracial school?  I think there’s some validity to that.  But I also noticed that academics at our current school are not as strong as I would like.  The current school lacks structure while boasting organic garden, performing arts, and creative student-lead learning.

In our current school we have managed to carve out a comfort zone with our identity, a way of being that doesn’t elicit endless racial questions.  Though they still happen on a regular basis.

Yesterday on our way home from school the boy we car pool with asked my daughter why her eyes are black.  He wanted to know why there was no differentiation between her eye color and her pupil.  She just told him that’s the way her eyes are, and was quick to joyfully point out that her sisters are the same.  He kept saying, “weird.”  I was getting annoyed, but stayed quiet.

He was saying “weird” because he didn’t know what else to say, not because he actually thought it was weird.  Do you know what I mean?  But it put me at a loss.  How could I capture that moment and make it a learning opportunity for an immature 6 year old boy?  And do I make every moment like this a learning opportunity?  There are so many.  How exhausting.

I wonder how many of these stupid sort of questions does she gets everyday?  She didn’t seem annoyed so I wasn’t going to pass my annoyance on to her.  Certainly it wouldn’t help her, at age 6, to get annoyed with every child who asks her ignorant questions.

So I ask myself, will I ever be happy with the school I send my children?  Is it better to enrich her mind with academics, while subjecting her to the ignorant inquisitiveness of her peers?  I am not ready to go through all of those questions and comments just yet.  I am certainly not ready for those bigger moments that happen on the playground, and hope that the teacher handles them appropriately.

My thoughts for this new school is to be up front with the teachers in the beginning of the school year.  Utilize the moment to educate our new community.  Have a conversation like this, “hey, this is how we handle racism or racial identity in our family…”; much like the conversation, “hey, these are the foods my child is allergic to.”  What are your thoughts on this?

In the meantime I am grateful that we will continue with her current school through the school year and then migrate in the Fall.  Perhaps by then I will be prepared to face yet another round of educating an ignorant group of children about my inter-racial, inter-cultural family.