Empathetic but realistic teacher earns a passing grade

While the country was recently agog at the audacity of Spokane NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal passing for black, claiming positions and scholarships not intended for her, I found myself wondering if she remembered the first time she passed. I wonder if she was scared, proud of herself, or just caught up in the moment.

I remember my first time passing. It was my first day teaching middle school. I was confronted by an angry Mexican abuela with wiry braids, chaperoning her granddaughter. She stood in the doorway of my classroom, clutching her young charge’s locator card in her hand, squinting at room numbers.

“Is this T-15?”

“Yes. And who is this lovely young lady?”

The girl looked down, tugged at the edge of her blouse, mumbling, “Juana Flores.”

Cheerful teacher voice. “Hi, Juana. I’m Mrs. Alvarado.” She looked a lot like the other girls who had already filed into class: uniform, ponytail, brand new white tennis shoes.

The grandmother shook the locator card at me. “You Mrs. Novak? It says here Novak.”

“I’m Mrs. Alvarado. I’ll be Juana’s teacher this year.”

“It says here Novak. What kind of name is Novak? Where you from anyway? Because all my nietos went to this school and I never heard of no Novak.” She shook her head.

I could have said, “It’s a Polish name. It’s the name of an ancestor who stowed away on a ship to get here.” I could have woven a thread between us, the immigrant connection, by pointing out that another ancestor was an immigrant from Russia who came here at age 12 with cardboard tucked inside his shoes to cover the holes. I could have said that as a recent bride, school paperwork still carried my maiden name.

But I didn’t. I ducked my cowardly head under the onslaught of her hostility and chose the path of least resistance.

“Yo no sé,” I shrugged. “Yo soy la Maestra Alvarado y soy la maestra de Juana. If it says on the card T-15, than this is where she is supposed to be.”

It is worth noting that my efforts at impressing the abuelita were fruitless. Later that school year, when I suspended her granddaughter for throwing pepperoni in the cafeteria, she accused me of picking on the girl because I was a racist.

On the day of our first conversation, however, I hid from her antagonism hoping I could slide quietly into acceptance. I hid behind my last name, a last name I gained only days before by marrying my husband, an immigrant from Mexico.

I wish I could say that I quickly realized the error of my ways and proudly claimed my German-Russian-Polish heritage. The truth is that for the first rocky school year I was terrified of losing credibility with parents and students.

They regularly assumed that I was either Mexican or of mixed race as a few of them are, and I did nothing to correct that misperception, especially after meeting that tough little abuelita who wanted nothing to do with a Novak.

In the world in which I chose to live, it was far easier to claim a race and culture to which I have no genetic right.

Unlike Rachel Dolezal, however, I knew I could never own a history that wasn’t mine or suffering I hadn’t experienced.

The struggle isn’t real, not for me. Even as a minority in my community, I will not undergo more than discomfort. I will not lose jobs, housing or opportunities. Traffic stops will not endanger me.

Still, the need to fit in is strong, so I straddle cultures between my surroundings and my heritage. My bicultural children learned Spanish before English, and were visited by El Raton de Dientes rather than the Tooth Fairy.

We know the Spanish word for every animal in the San Diego Zoo except the wombat. We celebrated my daughter’s 15th birthday with a quinceañera. I worry about my son being too far culturally removed from “Swiss Family Robinson” and “Treasure Island” or my daughter missing out on “Anne of Green Gables,” and “Little Women” — luxurious worries, rather than real fears.

I wonder if my children should play soccer rather than golf or dance ballet folklorico rather than hip-hop. I miss casseroles and country music — things that have fallen along the wayside on the path of least resistance. I laugh off my inability to dance or cook with a flip shrug, “I’m white,” knowing that reinforcing even negative stereotypes is an act of privilege.

I quit trying to pass after that first thorny year teaching middle school. I wonder if Rachel Dolezal will do the same now that she’s been outed as a Midwestern white girl. Falling into the hole of deception is understandable; choosing to stay there is not.

You can follow Nancy Alvarado on Twitter: @ViewDownHere.