JUDGE ME NOT:

Why judge me if you don’t know me? Don’t judge me because of the way I dress, the place I am from, or the way I look. It hurts me to see people being judged.

When I first started school on December 1, 2004, I was sitting in my ESL English class and the teacher asked me to introduce myself to the class. As soon as I opened my mouth to talk, almost the entire class began laughing because of the way I was speaking. It felt like my world was tuning upside down I had my head down. I was very ashamed to look in anyone’s face. The next day, when I came to school, students were pointing at me and saying, “You can’t speak English.” I felt so hurt and humiliated.

My heart told me to drop out of school, but I thought about my future and where I came from. I thought to myself, “If I drop out of school or change the class, it is not going to change the mind of people to stop judging me.” They knew I had no time to listen to what they were saying. A few weeks later, some of the students that used to laugh at me became my friends because they wanted me to join them so we could be making fun of other students. I joined them, but I knew to myself that I wasn’t going to make fun of anyone because I know how it feels to judge someone. We were about 20 in the class, and about of half of the class joined them.

One day in my English class again, the teacher asked this boy to read, and he couldn’t read. The students began to laugh at the boy. The teacher said stop and nothing else. I could see the humiliation in the boy’s eyes. I went to go talk to him, but I couldn’t because the students that became my friends were in class. I didn’t want them to not be my friends anymore, so I couldn’t do anything or say anything to the boy. I wanted to stay friends with them because a lot of people knew them I wanted people to know me too. My heart was not at peace, however, because I knew how he felt. Finally, I listened to my heart and went to him to make him know that there is someone who cares about him. The students were surprised to see me talking with the boy; they didn’t talk to me again after that. I had the strength to do what I knew was right because I knew it was the good thing to do. They continued making fun of other students but I didn’t.

The teacher of that class always asked questions to students that he knew couldn’t speak English or couldn’t read. I think he just liked to see people being humiliated or liked students to judge other students, or maybe he was just trying to help those students. I wasn’t sure what he was doing it for, but all I knew was that I was not taking his class again. I didn’t try to talk to the teacher about this because he was always in class when this was happening. He saw it and he heard it, so I don’t think I had to talk to him about what the students were doing to other students.

I did, however, try to talk to my parents about this, but they were not listening to me because they always told me not to overreact about what people have to say about you and be confident in yourself. They didn’t let me change the English class, so I had no choice but to stay in the class and deal with my problem. This experience really changed me a lot. It made me understand how people feel when they are being judged. I learned more things than I expected, like me not judging other people because of their looks, and I also learned not to let someone bring me down. I grew in strength as a result of this experience because the more the students laughed at me, the more I grew in strength and I found the power to fight back – not with my hand, but with my knowledge.