Harvard Day 1, Part 1: "Marginalized"

Our day began with some conversation about people who are marginalized. There was a beautiful tribute to those people who were lost in the domestic terror event in Orlando a couple of weeks ago, and it included a reflection from Maya Angelou that was amazing. I’ll add more on that later.

I made a note to look up what it means to marginalize. It’s one of those words we hear so frequently that I think its meaning gets distorted or evolves into something else. To marginalize someone is “to treat someone as insignificant or peripheral.” Whoa. That kind of got to me.

We were asked to be vulnerable and share if there was ever a time when we felt marginalized. Replace marginalized with “insignificant or peripheral” and I think we’ve all been there. I shared about first moving to College Station. It’s an intellectual community, and I felt like I was the cute little girl from the small town with the too thick accent and people didn’t take me seriously. Some of that was likely my own angst and perception, but certainly not all. I remember what that has felt like at different times in my life, and I certainly didn’t like it. To be treated as insignificant was painful for me, and my experiences are nothing like so many others who experience it daily. That's good perspective. 

Then we were tasked with asking who on our campus feels marginalized. It immediately occurred to me that every teacher who feels like their opinion doesn’t matter, who feels like their job is to listen to other people solve problems and keep quiet, has felt marginalized at my school and at my previous schools. I feel guilty about that. My job as their leader is to make sure it’s abundantly clear that every person matters.  Moreover, that they matter in the context of our work and our students.  

Then I thought of our students. And our parents. I want them all to feel significant and fully part of our school community. No one should ever feel marginalized in my school family. I can commit to that.

Back to the Maya Angelou video we saw. I’m linking it at the bottom. She says such beautiful things about tragedy but also about life. I sat there – Stormy Greeson Hickman from Rice, Texas, in a classroom at Harvard, y’all – and her words beautifully articulated how I feel about this experience today. She said, “One of the things I do [when I do anything of value], I take with me every person who has ever been kind to me.”

Everyone who has ever been kind to me is here and part of this wonderful experience. I can only imagine where I can go with others to whom I am kind, even after I’m gone from this earth. And so I will be kind, no matter a person's race, culture, sexual orientation, religion. My first lesson at Harvard is the same one I learned at home from my parents and since I was a child. That’s powerful stuff.