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Hartford’s community environment looks beyond race
Friendships and sharing break barriers
By Stephanie Brien
“Kids don’t see race,” Hartford student teacher Brynna Malen said.
Black, white, orange, whatever. They’re all just colors to kids.
“Kids don’t see race,” said Hartford University School student teacher Brynna Malen.
Inside the walls of Hartford University School, the student’s ethnic backgrounds are a far cry from that of the university students outside the walls.
While the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has a primarily white student population, the majority of students at Hartford are black with a small mixture of whites, Latinos and Asians.
Ethnic and demographic differences don’t matter in the tightly-knit school where kids are taught to act as a community.
Malen recalled how one day her fifth grade class was talking about cultural differences and one little girl raised her hand. When called on, she pointed out another student and said, “I’m friends with her and she is white.”
Malen said she politely pointed out that she was actually biracial, a mixture of black and white, but the girl shrugged it off and said, “I’m still her friend.”
Cultural differences don’t matter when choosing friends, but they can turn out to be useful teaching tools, Malen has discovered.
After listening to a story about a Vietnamese family, one of her first graders started talking about how her home county, China, is located near there and how she used to play outside and catch ladybugs.
Then once they had a student talking about another culture, the other students wanted to learn more.
“You create playground conversations that wouldn’t happen,” Malen said.
Now, when the class does roll call in the morning, they all answer with, Ni Hao, the Chinese word for hello.
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