When I decided to go to France, many people asked me if I was worried about going there given the recent events that happened. I didn’t even think about that when I booked but the more I was asked, the more I thought about it.
When I define myself, I don’t just think that I am a “hijabi” or a “muslim”. I define myself as a person who chose to wear the hijab and who believes in the core principles or Islam; working for a better and peaceful self and world, being sincere, honest and transparent with what I do, and treating everyone with respect and integrity.
Maybe that’s why I lose awareness most times that I look differently from most women around me, so I fail to think of what others think of me. Even if I didn’t wear the hijab, I probably would not think of what others think of me.
Anyway. I went on my trip truly expecting anything. Good. Bad. Whatever. My first encounter was at the airport of Marseille, where the customs guy literally looked at my passport for 2 seconds, stamped it and told me to have a good day. We went out right when I arrived, just to walk to streets of Aix-en-Provence and it was just like walking here, if not better. I got some smiles as I smiled at others, and sometimes I didn’t, which is no different from anyone’s experience walking amongst strangers.
The days that followed, as we went site-seeing, there were people who offered to capture pictures as they saw me trying to take selfies with the backgrounds behind me. Very nice of them.
One day, my uncle needed to fix his car, so we went to the car dealership where he bought his car. This man came up to me speaking so fast that I had no clue what he said. I told him that I speak English. And for the next 20 minutes he spoke to me about his experience with cars and the differences between the ones in France and Canada. I thought he was a salesman but it turned out that he was looking for a car with his daughter.
Any store I went to, those who worked there tried their best to communicate with me in English, with big smiles on their faces.
My experience was like this every single day, even upto passing customs at the airport on my way back. The two guys working at the station started laughing at each other’s English. They wished me a happy new year and let me through.
Everyone was so hospitable and nice. My experience was very positive and I wanted to share. Goodness will always prevail as long as we allow the forces that unite us to be stronger than those that work to separate us.
To relate this back to the classroom, how powerful is it for us educators to leave our biases and preconceptions of what challenges a classroom might bring? How powerful is it to walk in with a positive attitude towards all students despite the challenges that other students demonstrated? If we take a moment to re-evaluate our purpose of being educators and reflect back on our beliefs on education, we would be providing every student the opportunity to see and reach their potential. When we walk in already giving up on students who have been given up on in other classes, we are not breaking the cycle of negativity, but feeding it. There is no doubt that we have the power to believe in each and every one of them because, often times, we may be the only ones who believe in them when no one else has. So let’s do it.
– Najwa