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“Class, this is our new student, Rebecca,” said my teacher, Mr. Kerry.
As a 10-year-old Iranian immigrant, I stood frozen in the classroom entrance as the white faces of my classmates stared back at me.
“Rebecca, take a seat over here and start working on that math worksheet.”
I turned in the metal chair, but I had nothing to write. After a few seconds, Mr. Kerry noticed.
“Do you have a pencil?”
“No,” I said awkwardly. He came and put a pencil on my desk. Getting school supplies wasn’t high on my parents’ to-do list. We had left Iran two years earlier because of the 1979 revolution and the danger it presented to my family before we bounced from country to country and finally settled in Vancouver.
I had a hard time connecting with people
My parents had rented a sparsely furnished ranch-style single-family house on a quiet street where they began to make a life for me and my two younger brothers. My mother, with her broken English, struggled to make a home for her family in this unknown land. My father, who had lost everything he had built – including his business and his home – in Iran, tried to develop a real estate company from scratch. Their frustrations translate into constant fights, with anger staining our daily lives. My time at school was not better. Every day, I walked the halls, desperately trying and failing to connect with people. My accented English, olive skin, thick unibrow, and clothes my mom thought were chic—animal print shirts, corduroy pants rolled up at the bottom, French sailor scarves—reinforced my otherness.
The teacher told me to change my wardrobe
One day, as we were finishing class, Mr. Kerry leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Will you please stay? I want to talk to you about something.” After the other guys left, he sat across from me. “I know it’s hard being the new kid at school and trying to fit in, but you’re not doing yourself any favors by wearing these clothes.” Humiliated, I looked down. “Try wearing jeans and t-shirts like the other kids, it might help,” she said with an encouraging smile. I nodded, embarrassed to look at him, and said I would try. After I got over the sting of his comments, I dragged my mom to the mall and forced her to buy me Guess jeans and rock ‘n’ roll band t-shirts. I didn’t care that I knew next to nothing about the bands or their music. To my surprise, the kids started greeting me in the halls and letting me sit with them at lunch. Then girls in my class asked if I wanted to hang out at their houses after school. My mother didn’t like it. he thought I should go straight home. “You see your friends at school, that’s enough.” But after some tearful pleas, he let me go. It turned out that a criticism from my kind-hearted teacher not only changed the way I dressed, but also changed the way I connected with the other kids. Over the next four decades, I learned to love and accept myself as I was. I became a lawyer, got married, had children and realized how important it is to be true to oneself. While I wear whatever I want now, looking back, I am so thankful for Mr. Kerry. It changed the trajectory of my life and helped me survive those turbulent school years when all I wanted and needed was to fit in.
