My Daughter's Kindergarten Class

School is almost out for the summer. This year, I've been the homeroom mom in my daughter's kindergarten class, and I am realizing how much I am going to miss all of them. They're a beautiful, diverse, tight-knit group of children. We don't live in suburbia, but we're not exactly urban either. We live somewhere in between...just ordinary city-dwellers, but we have been blessed to be in a neighborhood school full of children from all over the world. In this one class, we have children from Venezuela, Mexico, Turkey, Iraq and China, as well as children with Vietnamese ethnicity, and African Americans. They talk openly about their differences, and the things that make them the same. They respect each other's religions, dress (my daughter keeps mistakenly calling her friend's hijab a head job), and physical differences. I can honestly say that I completely don't relate to people who are more comfortable when everyone else looks just like them. I actually think that's a little creepy. I believe that God loves diversity because he is creative. He made a world alive with differences, not sameness. I love the different skin shades, the different hair colors, the different shapes of eyes and the different accents and languages represented in my daughter's classroom. And I believe that these children are learning to love the differences also because they have learned to love each other in a small, kindergarten kind of way. I pray that this year has given these 22 children hearts that long to unite, and not divide; to tear down walls instead of build them. Perhaps this is a lot to expect from one year of kindergarten, but it all has to start somewhere...doesn't it?