A girl at school felt ill, and had to go home. Of course, we need to establish contact with the family before we release a kid, so I got her to ring home. She rang a contact, showed me the screen on her phone, to let me see who she was ringing, and the word on the screen was one I didn't recognise.
She finished the conversation, and I asked her about the word. Arabic for pappa, she told me (transliterated into the Latin alphabet). So I asked her about the word for mama, and so on. The conversation lasted all of a minute, but it was as if this girl grew a couple of inches -- a teacher was interested in HER background. She left smiling, despite feeling ill.
Arabic is my no means a small language, but it is where I live, and so the same mechanisms this opinion piece describes ("You must change to please us.") are all too often apparent from day to day.
Show a little curiosity, rather. Learn a little from those whose perspactive is different from yours. And above all, respect other people and their backgrounds -- they are as valuable as you think you are.
Going thru major personal #changes, trying to concentrate on #schoolwork, but it's just not happening. I think I'm going to spend time working on things that need doing re: changes, even though it'll put me behind re: reading, otherwise I'll never be able to #focus. Once those things are done, they're done.
I can't tell if this is logical 🤷🏻♀️🥴
I wish I was better at organizing my #mental space, but it's always been a struggle. I'm highly #distractible bc I always have so much in my head.