My first day of school was filled with all sorts of excitement and anxieties. With the sound of the bell I hurried inside and found my classroom. Not wanting to be late, I quickly put away my backpack and found the child-size chair with my name on it. I sat quietly checking out my new surroundings and my new classmates. I knew a couple of the kids from attending preschool at my church, but most of the 26 students in my class were new to me, and I was excited to make new friends.
When most of our items were put away, the teacher called the class to come sit on the round carpet. I sat next to Angelle, a friend from preschool as we talked about all the things we hoped we would get to do on our first day of school. When the teacher started talking to the class, we turned our attention to her. She told us that her name was Mrs. Cross, and started to go over the classroom and school rules. As she talked, I looked around at all of the new faces, finally landing on Colin. Colin had light brown skin, and dark hair and eyes.
I was really curious about him. Being in such a small community in rural Manitoba, I had never met anyone who looked like this before, but I remembered a story my mom often told about my sister meeting someone with dark skin. My sister had asked why he had chocolate on his face. My mom always told the story saying that she was so embarrassed, so I knew that I should not comment about the fact that Colin looked different than the rest of my peers.
Mrs. Cross continued telling us about our day and what we could expect, and when she was finished, she asked us to go around the circle and introduce ourselves. One by one my peers said their names, and where they lived, “I live down the street, so I walk to school!”, “I live on a farm so I take the bus!” When it was Colin’s turn the whole class stared at him. It was obvious that many of us had never seen someone who looked like Colin before. Colin introduced himself, and told the class that he lived in town, but his family had moved from Trinidad when he was younger.
I remember being very interested in Colin. When the sharing circle was finished we broke off into groups to play at the different stations the teacher had set up. I went to the sand table with Angelle and we talked about all the new people we were meeting. I noticed that much of the class were still very interested in Colin. Some going out of their way to play with him, but most just watching him from afar. Most of my class were being raised in the same town that their parents had been, if not on the same farm, or in the same house, but here was this boy who looked very different from us all, and was from not only another town, but another country. For 5-year-olds, this was very hard to wrap our minds around.