Thanks Anonymous--great points

A comment was posted that totally hit me and made me see something I hadn't seen. I agree that there is a different value put on education in different cultures, and there certainly is a different message at the school I teach than the one I went to. Our society is not equal in anyway. Being a teacher has taught me that. Being a teacher has taught me so much more than I can ever hope to teach my students.

I have come to realize that as much as we want to think that we can look past culture, race, etc. We truly cannot ignore those things. We can't pretend that those things do not exist as barriers in many cases. As I think, my students graduation was exaclty what they expected. It only disappointed those of us who have a different idea of what it should have been like. I need to be happy for my student and embrace thier celebratory style. I don't want us all to be the same. I love diversity. I think it is essential, yet here I am denegrating the people I love because their ways are so different than mine. I have a long way to go in understanding myself and being honest about what type of preconceived notions that I have about what is right and wrong and working to realize that very few things that happen in our society have clear rights and wrongs--it is all a matter of perception. I must keep working on mine.