"'My children are black. They are not like your children. They know they are black and we want that to be recognized. It's a positive difference, an interesting difference, and a comfortable natural difference. At least it could be, if you teachers learned to value difference more, you talk about it” p.12The things Mrs. Hawkins says to Mrs. Paley are. things that really stood out to me. I think if Ms. Paley had thought more about what Ms. Hawkins told her at the beginning of the book, she would have made some of her discoveries about teaching African students sooner. -Americans. I think this statement has had a huge impact on the way I think about teaching. I never thought about the positive aspects of differences before. I grew up in a predominantly white area. black people in our school, but most of them were bused in from the city and didn't live in the area. I always wondered why they didn't stay and go to schools closer to home. Ms. Hawkins makes a good point: integration leads to positive, interesting and natural differences. I think if I had been in a school with only white kids, I wouldn't have been shown these differences in such a good light. "Arlene was black. I was happy that she was in that class, because Steven was there. In other words, if the most difficult kid in the class was black, then I wanted the most difficult kid in the class to be black. more remarkable is black too. » p. 25This passage bothered me This is probably the part that bothered me the most in this book. There are many African Americans who are better behaved, more intelligent. artistic, more athletic, etc., than white children There are also many African Americans who are less educated and less well behaved than white children, but the same goes for both of these things with white children. .It bothers me that she knows that if the worst kid in class was white, she wouldn't care if the best kid in class was white. I think throughout the book she generalizes a lot with Afro-s. Americans without even realizing it She claims she's better, but I don't think that's really the case. She keeps trying to make African American children become the same as white children..