To Carmen

I remember the only black child in the class on the first day we painted. The other children tried lots of colors on the paper and made all kinds of shapes and designs. Alexander went to the easel last, interested only in white paint. He held it on the brush and looked at it and never looked at the paper. He began to paint his hands, first the palms carefully, then fingers, and finally turned his hands over to coat the backs with thick while paint. I suddenly realized that he was not using the paint “correctly”, even though I had been as absorbed in what he was doing as he had been. I said, “Alexander! What are you supposed to be doing with that paint?”
The teaching assistant rushed past me to interrupt and say, “Look, Alexander, look at the way it covers your fingers and fingernails.” She talked with him, and with me, and together we helped him paint his arms up to his elbows, almost up to his shirtsleeves. I can see the concentration on his face as he pressed his white handprints on a sheet of paper. And I can feel his excitement as he washed the white paint off with lots of soap and rushing water, free again to choose the person he could be.
I left that day strengthened and reassured in my new role, a new educator in a child’s world, free again to be the teacher I choose to be.