Growing up I went to 3 different schools in just elementary school alone. I moved from Ohio to Virginia, and attended 2 schools there. Being mixed with black and white it's always been hard for me to find people I identified with in any of the schools I went to. In New Concord, Ohio in second grade my class did an art activity where we would draw our features on a paper cut out of a person our teacher gave to us. All of my other classmates got peach colored paper people, I was the only one with a chocolate colored person. I didn't understand why my little person was different than everyone else. Then when I moved to Virginia I was one of the lightest skinned kids in my class, and people always assumed I was white. It was hard for me to make friends or approach people because it was hard for me to feel like I fit in. This is why I believe classroom diversity is important, everyone should feel comfortable in their learning environment, and not feel singled out or like they're vastly different, because when your little different can be construed as wrong or weird. That is also why I will be producing and distributing a zine about this very important topic.
I created this collage to hopefully get the message of how classroom diversity and multicultural education was important, I wanted to show the little girl holding the girl that looks like her on the floor as like the baseline and the word success written in the cloud like it was the goal or what they were reaching for. I added the "It's everything that's possible" quote as what education in schools could be. I created this zine draft at the lab in the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, on one of our class field trips there. This has helped me in the process of learning about my topic because it helped me think deeper about what images represent what I'm passionate about and the message I am trying to get across. I am actually very proud of the way this draft turned out and I look forward to refining it to make it better.