Family Traditions
We didn’t have people come over to our house as much as I would have liked when I was younger, but we had a home that was always available to families that were struggling or needed extra help. For example, we had two girls stay at our house for a few weeks while their mom was dealing with health problems. Or another example was when we had one of my classmates come over for a few hours to give her a place to hang out and distract her for a bit while in the midst of her parent’s having problems.
When we did invite guests over, we always tried to make them the focus. We did activities that they wanted to do and tried to learn more about them during our conversations. As we got to know our guests more, our conversations became more personal, and we treated them more like family (hugs or handshakes when coming and leaving). Regardless of who we invited over, we always tried to be respectful of our guests and would try to make their visit to our home comfortable and enjoyable.
School Hospitality
There were no clear moments I can think of where my teachers were uninviting, at least in my personal experience. They treated us all quite well and we knew they cared about us. The only times I can think of where some teachers may have been seen as uninviting was when some of their students were being very disrespectful to them. I would put more of the blame on the students and the environment that they created with their actions that would have created a feeling of being uninvited. However, there could have been more respect shown from both the teacher and student side of those situations.
On a more positive note, I remember one assignment a teacher gave to our class that required us to take pictures from magazines or newspapers that portrayed us or a part of our identity and then display it on a piece of paper. I appreciated this assignment because it gave us the chance to share some of our interests and allow the teacher to get to know a bit about the things that we thought reflected who we were.