School Bells

Starting kindergarten had to be one of the worst experiences of my life. Born and raised in a Spanish household I only knew how to speak Spanish so going to an English speaking school for the very first time was pretty intimidating. I didn’t understand a word of what the kids and teachers were saying so I automatically felt like the outcast of the class. I remember crying every time my mother would have to drop me off at school, I would cause quite a commotion which I’m sure the teachers did not appreciate. I had little to no friends for most of my elementary school year because of my lack of self-esteem that had been built up, due to the fact that I felt like the black sheep in school because of my inability to speak English.

I spent my whole elementary school year in Parsippany Christian School. A Baptist school that was very strict when it came to academics and outer appearance. The girls in the school weren’t allowed to wear pants or skirts that were below the knees and boys were only allowed to wear khaki pants, denim was never an option-not even for field trips. The quality of education in Parsippany Christian School was top notch but the teacher’s maturity was a whole other story. Never in my life have I ever met such a superficial group of people, teachers would ridicule anyone that was different whether that is based on religion, race or sexual orientation. Individuals that were Muslim were labeled as terrorists while men that wore piercings were labeled as being gay; it was ignorant stigmas like these that caused me to have little to no respect to the teachers in my school.

My school environment was far from perfect but that superficial and close minded “Christian” school…and I use the word Christian very lightly because in my opinion they were far from it, gave me the ambition to be the open minded individual that I am today. I’ll always judge someone based on their inner appearance rather than what they may look like on the outside, so I guess I could partly thank Parsippany Christian School for my lack of shallowness.