There is one.
There is one Muslim girl in our school.
That she knows of.
And her little brother.
Yesterday the academic vice principal dropped by my class to inform me that this one girl needed to say something. It would be worth it to give her the time. We only had seconds and he was gone before he could elaborate.
I initially worried, Oh no, what did I do wrong?
Then I settled. It's okay, I soothed myself. My heart is in the right place; my intentions are good. If I made a mistake, I made a mistake. There's nothing that can't be fixed. I can apologize, backtrack, make up for my shortcomings.
At the class break, she came up to me and asked, "What did Mr. S say to you?"
"He said you needed to talk to the class."
She lightened up. "Oh. Okay. I only need a few minutes. Should I wait until the end of class?"
We decided that that was best.
So, I gave her the last five minutes.
The senior class has a group chat. She initially sent a message and then someone replied with the name of Osama Bin Laden--but had rolled it into her name with a rhythmic flow. It was stamped with emojis of bombs.
As the only Muslim in a school of six hundred students, she took it personal. She was crushed.
But she didn't stand up in class to chastise the evident attack.
She stood up to thank her fellow students for having her back. For when the tease with bomb emojis popped up on the group chat so did her fellow students' support.
The support outweighed the silly attack.
She handled it beautifully.
Comments