Hair Lesson

On the first day of school, Shawnte' walked into class as a bright-eyed, absolutely adorable, petite 9th grade student. The first thing that struck me was her voice. She has a cartoon character's baby voice. I was looking at the young woman explaining to me how she lived with her grandparents, and I was thinking, "She sounds like a Disney character." Then I realized that my fascination did not stop there. I was entranced by her perfectly coiffed braids that covered her head and ended in mysteriously simple ends that were exactly even all over. Although I'm sure I'd seen hair like hers before, I don't think I'd ever paid much attention. Every day for a few weeks, Shawnte' would come in with her braids in some slightly new style: all down, partially pulled back, ponytail, pigtails, etc. My fascination continued.

Until one day, she walked into class with a smart, stylish, BUT VERY SHORT hair style. I scooted up to her and exclaimed, badly concealing my consternation, "Shawnte', what the heck did you do to your beautiful hair?" Unfortunately (or not), I made this comment in the hearing of the majority of the students right at the beginning of class. The entire group of students erupted into uproarious laughter. I looked around in confusion. "What's so funny" I asked.

"Ms. Hoskins, That wasn't my real hair," Shawnte' tried to explain. "Them was microbraids."

That explanation did not help. Brow wrinkled, I looked at her and said, "Microbraids? Not real hair? Explain, please."

At this point, Rachael piped in, "This ain't my real hair either. You'll never see my real hair. No one but my hair girl ever sees my real hair. Shoot, I barely know what my real hair looks like!"

Trust me, this was a whole new world to me. Several other girls in the class contributed their "non-real" hair realities to me until my head was spinning with cultural overload. They started throwing all of this information at me until I threw my hands up.

"You want us to show you, Ms. Hoskins?" asked Rachael. "I could bring in some hair, and we could explain it all to you." She seemed sincere, and the rest of the girls were looking at me with eager expressions on their faces.

Frankly, I liked that idea. It seemed more concrete than the abstract explanations they were giving me. So, that's what we did. The next day, Rachael brought in plastic bins of hair. She laid it out all over my desk. She and the other girls started telling me about all the different types of hair (human, horse, synthetic). They told me the different ways it's put in (sewed, glued, braided). They gave me different names (weave, extensions, microbraid).

The boys in the class got into the act by explaining to me about boar's hair brushes and doo-rags, waves and clippers. No one was left out of the conversation because everyone has their own grooming style.

I learned so much that day about hair and culture, and, yes, the it was an important lesson. However, the willingness to simply ask my students to explain that which I didn't understand was an even more important lesson.

What I gained that day was the students' trust in ways I didn't begin to understand until one day Rachael walked up to me as we were both walking down the hall and said, "See that girl up there, Ms. Hoskins?" I nodded and said, "Yep, Bad weave." She said, "You got that right!" and continued walking. I had learned my lesson.