Training, part 1

Jon and I had our first training class at Bellefaire today. It was a cultural class. It basically reminded us that our culture is defined by hundreds of different qualities that we possess and it can vary greatly between neighbors, close friends and even family members. We talked about how our culture will effect our future daughter and vise versa. The class was actually pretty interesting and it was great to meet a room full of people going through the same process, some for the second and third time.

We ended the class with a video called Eye of the Storm. It is an experiment a third grade teacher did with her students just after Martin Luther King Jr was killed. In a nutshell, one day kids with blue eyes were told they were superior to kids with brown eyes. Blue eyed kids got seconds at lunch, longer play time at recess etc. The next day she told them she lied and brown eyed kids were actually superior. That day, brown eyed kids got all the perks. It was amazing to see the results. Obviously the video is old, but I highly recommend checking it out. While it was clearly about racism and not culture, it was easy to see how the two can overlap and it gave us a lot to think about. Our little girl is going to face a lot of uphill battles simply because we will be her parents. This class was the first step in equipping us to help her win those battles.

Next weeks class is going to touch on culture and a ton of other related topics. We will be spending 23 hours in class next Friday-Sunday, but I'm actually looking forward to it.