A Private Middle School in 1990s Oakland Expanded My World View
Reflections on empathy and inclusion
In 1991, when I was in 7th grade, I moved from Norman, Oklahoma to Oakland, California to live with my dad and step-mom, Lil. On the plane ride out, more extroverted passengers tried to chat me up. They had questions when I said I was from Oklahoma. It took me a minute to realize they weren’t teasing me.
“Do you live in teepees?”
“How do you get drinking water?”
“Do you ride in a covered wagon?”
Hahaha. Fortunately, the advent of the internet eventually almost squelched these kinds of questions.
In Oakland, after being personally interviewed by school staff, I was accepted into a small private school that opened a world of new experiences for me.
My dad and Lil didn’t want to send me to the overcrowded, underfunded public school in their Oakland district. Although I didn’t directly experience the sort of socioeconomic and racial diversity that is found in an Oakland public school, I did find myself in a more diverse school setting than I had ever before experienced.
I’ll forever be grateful for the year and a half I spent at St. Paul’s Episcopal Private School. It’s there that I got to see other…
