My daughter is the only white girl in her grade: ask me anything

[Anonymous]

Thanks for posting this OP. Interesting. Not so much your experience, which is not at all surprising because minority or poor doesn't equal criminal! I am more surprised by some of the horrible comments, such bigots!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for posting this OP. Interesting. Not so much your experience, which is not at all surprising because minority or poor doesn't equal criminal! I am more surprised by some of the horrible comments, such bigots!

Sadly, I'm not surprised by it anymore. Especially in DCUM.

It feels worse when it's IRL...

[Anonymous]

OP, I think you are making a great choice--stick with your neighborhood school, which it sounds like is doing a great job of meeting your child's needs. It sounds like she is happy and learning, and able to go to school nearby--that is great. It also sounds like if that starts not to work out, you will consider other options (including working with her current school to make sure her needs are addressed).

We were in a similar situation to you for PK, and we could easily have stayed at least a few more years. But we ended up playing the lottery, got lucky, and left the school. I think the lottery complicates matters in DC. People would certainly stay in their neighborhood schools longer if they thought they would have lottery luck in later years if the neighborhood school was not meeting their child(ren)'s needs.

[Anonymous]

Like others have said its nothing

Wait until you actually need to learn things and how far behind everyone else is

You will be gone by 3rd grade just like everyone else lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like others have said its nothing

Wait until you actually need to learn things and how far behind everyone else is

You will be gone by 3rd grade just like everyone else lol

Oh, OK.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:She is your oldest, I assume?

She is an only child. Why do you ask?

Because your responses show. Just wanted to confirm.

Okay. I don't see how it's relevant. I have one child. I will likely not have another child for medical reasons. How does this relate to my experience?

It's relevant because at some point (soon) you will have to deal with the difference between your idealistic views and the reality of what your DD will have to deal with.

I don't see how that relates to how many kids I have. Does your experience suddenly change because you have 2 kids in a school instead of 1?

No, I think once you go thru the process with older one, your views change. When you have only one young kid like you, your views are still naive/innocent. Don't get me wrong. I think what you are doing is great but the reality can be harsh for your DD later.

Not true. Our DD, who is now an adult, went through K-12 in DCPS, all of which were "majority minority" schools. Other than language barrier, and occasionally "bullying" issues, she had a great experience. Shes now in her last year at Georgetown Law.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like others have said its nothing

Wait until you actually need to learn things and how far behind everyone else is

You will be gone by 3rd grade just like everyone else lol

You're right. You're super smart and OP is not. You feel better now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op have you read the book fortress of solitude? Part of the book involves the protagonists experience as one of the few white people at a majority black school. His experience sounded very isolating. Are you worried your daughter might exoerience that? Do you think you'd know if she were having trouble, esp as she gets older? I was an only child in a neighborhood with only 1 other child and I was very lonely. When we moved to a neighborhood with tons of kids I was so much happier. I liked school a lot in both places even though the former was very diverse and the latter not - both school experiences were great but the social experience was so much better when we moved. It wasn't about race just about one neighborhood having lots more families of young kids. But places with better performing schools tend to be where you find lots of kids.

I haven't read that book.

Look, I understand all the things that you guys are concerned about and the things you experienced. I'm not unconcerned about those things. I'm just not motivated to find a different school for DD right now when this one is working for us right now. Given that DD is in 1st grade, I thought that it might be relevant for families who are trying to decide whether to send their 3yo to their neighborhood school but are concerned about the social ramifications of being the "only" of whatever in their class.

Living in DC, it is a reality that many of our neighborhoods are highly segregated by class, which correlates strongly with race in DC proper. Anyone buying a house in DC and having kids who live in that house who wants to send their children to public school is likely going to be dealing with some variation of this issue. Before DD entered the system, it was still easily possible to lottery into a good charter or a WOTP elementary school, such that those things were reasonable backup plans if you couldn't buy a house in the good-school-wealthy-family neighborhood you wanted. That's just not the reality on the ground anymore. Most people entering the lottery now will be matched at their neighborhood school, and at least from what I've observed here, there is a lot of hesitation about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are in DC right?

What are house values in your areas? Is it mostly SFH or apartments?

We would be in a similar situation in NE DC. Our DD is white Latina and we are a higher SES than most attendees of our IB school. I don't worry about her fitting in because of color but other SES factors. Thanks for sharing your experience. I know one other family who sent her kids to be the only white kids but I haven't heard as much detail/analysis as your answers.

We don't have a lot of SFH in our neighborhood. It's mostly apartments and condos. Tbh, most of the kids at our school are coming from the apartments, while the condos are mostly occupied by folks without kids. I think the issue in our neighborhood that causes the school kids to be less diverse than the overall population is that most of the young white people don't have kids or have babies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you think you are exceptional, OP?

If you're asking if I am arrogant, my answer would be no, I don't think I am.

If you're asking if I feel that my decisions are unusual, then honestly, my answer is yes. A lot of my friends have been playing the lottery every year in hopes of trading up. We didn't do that. We had a great year, and after that year, we decided to just stay where we were until/unless something happened to make us question that decision. We are - at this time - fully committed to remaining at our school through grade 5. I think that makes me exceptional because I don't know a lot of people who have other options who have made that decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't need to ask you anything, because I've lived your child's experience. I was the only white child in my class between 1st and 5th grade. From 1st to 3rd grade, it was no problem at all and I never really thought about it. In 4th and 5th grade, other girls began excluding me because I didn't speak Spanish and didn't have the same cultural heritage as them. Honestly, who knows, maybe kids will always find a reason to pick on each other at that age and it would not have mattered if there were other children of my race at my school - maybe kids just would have picked on me for something else. All that I know is that it wasn't the best of times, and it was good to move to a middle school where there was genuine diversity and all different types of kids.

OP here. Thank you for sharing your experience. I am really sorry that that happened to you. I had a similar experience, but I believe it was related to switching schools in 4th grade rather than any cultural differences. I think that kids will generally find something different to latch onto - in my case it was that I was new. I think that schools these days are better equipped to handle that kind of social issue than they were when I was a kid. Not all schools, obviously, but in general, we pay more attention than we used to to these issues.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:How much diversity is there in the teaching ranks? How many white kids in the other grades?

This is actually something I'm not thrilled with. There is very limited diversity in the teaching ranks. We have a lot of young white women teaching. I was complaining about this to my father (who teaches in a university department that sees a lot of elementary education majors), and he basically told me that it wasn't fair to hold the school accountable for the demographics of the profession.

The lower grades are more diverse. The upper grades are diverse in that they have decent splits of African American kids, Latino kids, and a small but not insignificant population of Asian kids of various extractions, but no white kids above first as far as I'm aware.

Which school is this? I'm married to a Vietnamese man so I can only guess -- PG county and the only Asians are Vietnamese.

I'm not going to name the school, sorry.

Not sure it's fair to complain about "young white women" teaching. My daughter is a very young, very white teacher in a DC school. She is a fantastic teacher who worked primarily with at-risk kids before she accepted a job in DC. The kids in her old school were mostly in school as a condition of their release from either juvenile or jail. That's where her heart is. While I'm sure there are benefits to having more diversity among teachers, at the end of the day it's the teaching that matters. My daughter graduated Summa Cum Laude from a very well known university. She could be teaching anywhere. She has chosen to work with kids who need the most help.

OP here.

My issue with the vast majority of our teachers being "young white women" is that I think it would be helpful for the students - particularly the boys - to have at least one teacher in their elementary school experience who looks like them - for the same reasons that people complain that DCPS isn't diverse enough (want good representative samples of population, think it's isolating to be the only one, etc.). I wish that we provided better incentives for young men (particularly young men of color) to teach. It's not the fault of the people in the profession that other people don't go into the profession.

What your daughter is doing is great. I hope you tell her how proud you are often.

What difference does it make, we don't demand Asian teachers and are whopping all the other minority's academically.

[Anonymous]

Are you aware that you have the foundation set for an AMAZING college application essay?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like others have said its nothing

Wait until you actually need to learn things and how far behind everyone else is

You will be gone by 3rd grade just like everyone else lol

OP here. Thanks for stating that the 3 years we've spent at a school that we love are "nothing" and implying that no one is learning anything in those years. I will be sure to let my child, who is able to read and do math, know that this is not learning and let her teachers know that what they've been doing is not teaching.

What school did you go to, where they teach that experiences are universal?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP thinks she is "holier-than-thou." I think she is just naive or stupid or both.

Funny. I took her message exactly opposite. I think she came off as humble. Especially in the follow ups.

Minority parents are the most racist