Thank You Thursday: My Pro-Choice, Pregnant, Obama-voting, Teacher Sister

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I have two wonderful older sisters. They are my best friends and and the smartest, strongest women! I love them both equally but in the feministing tradition of Thank you Thursdays, I have to thank my oldest sister. She's pro-choice, pregnant, Obama-voting teacher of middle school children in a slightly conservative catholic school, and she is awesome for so many reasons including this story she told me last night:

The kids in her 6th grade class were excited about the elections. The class seemed to be divided equally between both candidates, and obviously the Obama half was very happy on Wednesday. The McCain half was bitter and you could feel it in the air. One little girl remarked "Obama's a baby killer" to which my sister said, "Really? How many babies did he kill?" The girl was surprised at her question and couldn't answer it saying "you know what I mean..." to which my sister replied, "no, sorry, I don't" Later, feeling the need to have some post-election clarification about the candidates and our President Elect Obama (sounds awesome doesn't it?!), my sister opened up her classroom to questions. The kids wanted to know what the candidates' religions were. "They are both Christian" my sister informed them. "No," another little girl said, "Obama's Muslim... He lied about being Christian" My sister told them, "you know, I don't know exactly what sect of Christianity Obama is, but I know he's not Muslim, and I'll prove it." During her lunch, she printed out candidate bios for her class. Sure enough, as we all know, Obama is not Muslim. He belongs to the Church of Christ. Not like that should matter.

But my sister was surprised at what she was hearing, the "baby-killing" remark and the "Muslim" remark, as if being Muslim was a bad thing. She said to me, the kids don't just pull these remarks out of thin air... they hear it at home. Most likely from their uninformed parents/family/friends.

So this is my personal Thank You to my sister, for educating her class about our next president, that they not just echo radical and ignorant statements they hear outside school, but that they think for themselves, do their research, or at least as their teacher for help. I thanked my sister over the phone for voting Obama. But she didn't need any convincing. She said she voted that way (as we all did) for our country's sake, but also for the sake of her daughter and her future child with whom she is pregnant with right now. Both were present in the voting booth with her... and they are all awesome!

Posted by aroberti - November 06, 2008, at 04:13PM | in Thank You Thursdays