When I think of my identity, before thinking about my personality, before thinking about my friends, and before thinking about anything else, I think about Milwaukee Sign Language School (MSLS). No matter how much time passes since I attended MSLS, I will never forget my time there.
When I was young, perhaps two or three years old, my parents were getting worried about the fact that I would hardly speak. While my brother and sister were already beginning to form sentences at that age, I was barely saying more than a word at a time, so my parents decided to look into the possibility that I may have had a speech impediment. One of the first places they found was Milwaukee Sign Language School. At first glance, the school was amazing. …show more content…
While it had some evokes some fond memories, that’s not the reason I remember MSLS. One of the first pieces to fall was due to racism. MSLS has a ratio of about 15:1 black to white students. Even though I didn’t think that skin color mattered in the least, my classmates felt differently. My classmates would question why I was going to this school and would say that I didn’t belong. They would exclude me from classroom activities because I was different. Thankfully not everyone was involved, (about half weren’t taking part), but nevertheless I was still tormented. I was tormented for something that should have ended a long time …show more content…
I may have gotten above a 4.0 after a while, but my parents switched me (and my siblings) out from MSLS to Webster Transitional School. I never told my parents about what happened in first or second grade, but they still gathered that MSLS was darker than it first appeared. As soon as MSLS’s original principal switched districts, my parents took me to Webster.
Even though I tried for years to rid myself of those memories, I could never quite banish them from my mind. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that those memories were important. In a way, I needed those events to occur how they did. Before those events, and a while after, I was easily exploited. I let people just walk all over me, but I knew that I had to put an end to me. So in a way, MSLS hardened me, and my classmates made me perceive that not everyone has good in them.
Because of MSLS, I’d like to think that I’m now a stronger person (at least a better student). Even though the events that unfurled were unpleasant, I’m who I am now because of them, one-hundred percent. For that reason, I wouldn’t change one moment of my past, because no matter how much relief it may cause in short-term, I wouldn’t be where I am today unless I took every punch, every pencil, and every hateful word MSLS had to throw my
When I was young, perhaps two or three years old, my parents were getting worried about the fact that I would hardly speak. While my brother and sister were already beginning to form sentences at that age, I was barely saying more than a word at a time, so my parents decided to look into the possibility that I may have had a speech impediment. One of the first places they found was Milwaukee Sign Language School. At first glance, the school was amazing. …show more content…
While it had some evokes some fond memories, that’s not the reason I remember MSLS. One of the first pieces to fall was due to racism. MSLS has a ratio of about 15:1 black to white students. Even though I didn’t think that skin color mattered in the least, my classmates felt differently. My classmates would question why I was going to this school and would say that I didn’t belong. They would exclude me from classroom activities because I was different. Thankfully not everyone was involved, (about half weren’t taking part), but nevertheless I was still tormented. I was tormented for something that should have ended a long time …show more content…
I may have gotten above a 4.0 after a while, but my parents switched me (and my siblings) out from MSLS to Webster Transitional School. I never told my parents about what happened in first or second grade, but they still gathered that MSLS was darker than it first appeared. As soon as MSLS’s original principal switched districts, my parents took me to Webster.
Even though I tried for years to rid myself of those memories, I could never quite banish them from my mind. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that those memories were important. In a way, I needed those events to occur how they did. Before those events, and a while after, I was easily exploited. I let people just walk all over me, but I knew that I had to put an end to me. So in a way, MSLS hardened me, and my classmates made me perceive that not everyone has good in them.
Because of MSLS, I’d like to think that I’m now a stronger person (at least a better student). Even though the events that unfurled were unpleasant, I’m who I am now because of them, one-hundred percent. For that reason, I wouldn’t change one moment of my past, because no matter how much relief it may cause in short-term, I wouldn’t be where I am today unless I took every punch, every pencil, and every hateful word MSLS had to throw my