New-age learning is something I never thought I would be involved with. When I first attended college everything was done at a brick and mortar with face to face interaction with our professors. I had one professor who had a favorite student and they seemed to always be nicer to them, willing to answer the questions they would ask. The third-grade teacher we learned about who wanted to teach her class how stereotyping was interesting. It reminded me of a lesson Mr. Smith (name changed) did in high school. He was my high school history teacher and we were learning about World War II.
In this lesson, he had everyone who had brown hair and brown eyes stand up and move to the back of the classroom. Anyone who had any hair color other than blond hair and blue eyes was told to also join those in the back of the classroom. After he had us separated he told those of us left sitting to look around the room. My natural hair color is blond and I have blue eyes. There was me and two other people left sitting. He told us we would have been the only ones to survive if Hitler were to still be alive. This may seem extreme and probably not something you would expect to learn about in high school but it helped drive home the point of discrimination.
It was a lesson that still sticks with me 14 years later. I will never forget him or that lesson, I will never forget that simply because someone looks different than me they are discriminated against. I think that was a defining moment for me, even if I didn’t know it back then. As an adult, I speak out against discrimination, I teach my kids that you treat everyone the same regardless of what they look like, who they love, or what gender they are.