Looking Forward to a New Year

I spent much of my childhood around the women of the college soccer team that my mother coached. Before I started kindergarten, I had not been exposed to much diversity in my community. When an African American woman joined the soccer team, she fascinated me. One day we were playing a game; I was trying to guess which hand -- held behind her back -- contained a piece of candy. I ended up picking the wrong hand, but that didn’t matter to me. I was more preoccupied by her palm. I took her hand in mine and smoothed out her fingers, doing the same with my own hand. After a moment of comparing the two I declared, “It looks just like mine!” I was six years old and that was the first time that I realized that someone who looks so different form myself, could be just like me.

In a strange turn of events, I experienced that same kind of occurrence, though the roles were reversed. Last year, I was a corps member and the classroom I served in was an all-black classroom in Southeast D.C. One day a young student was sitting next to me on the carpet during Circle Time. He reached over and grabbed my arm, seemingly comparing his to mine. For several seconds he just stared, as if he was just realizing that we had two different skin colors. He looked up at me and asked “Why is our skin different?” I had to think of how best to tell a young child why his skin color was different than mine. I never got the chance to answer the question because he was promptly distracted by a chorus of Bingo and forgot all about his confusion over our different skin colors. Later that same day, he told me that he “loved doing Jumpstart!”, high fived me, and ran off to dramatic play. Those are the moments that make me love working for such a great organization. I can’t wait for the next year with my Jumpstart friends! 

Sierra Hicks

Team Leader

Team Exploration