Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

As an owner of an in home preschool I often get many parents who love the fact that our school is much like a center in the details and activities but has the small child-teacher ratio of an expensive private school. My class of 6 students over the year has been pretty diverse usually predominantly comprised of African American children but usually 2 children are Caucasian or bi-racial. This has always appealed to non-African American families.

A few months back I received a call from a parent who's child recently graduated my school. This family, a Caucasian family had been with my school for almost 3 years so I knew them pretty well....or so I thought. The mom explained that the local elementary school only had a few kindergarten classes and that none of them had Caucasian children in them. The mom was extremely worried about how this would affect her child. She said once she gets to kindergarten she would see other children that looked like her but until then it would be hard for her. I explained to her that while her daughter attended my school she was the only Caucasian child during that time and she was ok. The mom thought because the class size was so small it may have not been an issue for her child then. The mom mentioned during the conversation that she thought it was fair that she speak with my current 2 Caucasian preschool families about their options after leaving my school. I explained to her that I thought that would be inappropriate - she didn't care to hear that. After hanging up the phone I was really upset. I was upset because through the entire conversation each time I asked the mom how her daughter felt about being in the class she ignored it. She would just mention that she didn't like the idea of her being in class with families whose background she knew nothing about. She said she felt that most African American families in our neighborhood were very different than myself and the families I enroll in my school. I asked her what she meant by that. She kept saying you know what I mean.

This whole conversation took me by surprise. I thought I knew her. I had let my own African American child stay the night at her house. I had done favors for her as she had done for me. I felt like all this time she looked at me a bit different opposed to me looking at her without the view of starring at her skin color. I believe as a result of her prejudice toward African Americans her child will also inherit this -ism. Its unfair that her child has grown in a school (my preschool) where differences were celebrated and all cultures and races were valued. No child was ever singled out or made to feel uncomfortable. It seems like all the values I tried to incorporate and teach went unnoticed by this mom. As a result I think this child will eventually inherit the same prejudice toward other races.