This is part 2 of a 5 part assignment. In this writing we are to write about the same episode in part 1. This time from someone else's perspective who was involved in the situation. Obviously we can't know what that person may have been thinking so we have to see ourselves as that person and speculate how they may have perceived or experinced the same incident. So, here it is!
Personal Memory Ethnography Project Part 2
Hi. My name is Cynthia. I am 5 years old and in Mrs. Goodrich’s kindergarten class. I like it because every day I get to play with my best friend, Susan.
However, there is one person here who we really don’t like. Her name is Mary Lee. We don’t know much about her; but she is way different than us. She doesn’t have nice clothes or shoes like we do. Really; her clothes look used; and so far, she has only worn one pair of shoes all year! She smells. Like cigarettes. I think her parents must smoke.
Anyway, we just don’t want her anywhere near us. So, this morning, on the way to school, we thought of a plan to get her in trouble. We decided to build a tall tower out of the wooden blocks that she was always playing with. Then we would knock it down and tell our teacher that Mary Lee had ran over and wrecked our building. During play time we implemented our plan. We built it and violently knocked it over. Then; we started screaming and crying so hard that Mrs. Goodrich came running over to see what was wrong! Of course, we told her that Mary Lee had done it because she wanted to play with the blocks. Mrs. Goodrich punished her by not allowing her to play outside at recess.
Out on the playground; Susan and I laughed and laughed. We knew she would never come near us again!
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September 14, 2007 at 6:57 PM
Hi Mary Lee. Thanks for posting about your project, it is thought provoking. As I was reading this post after reading the first part, I was speculating that I would have chosen the teacher’s perspective since I have very little experience with children and how they think (I was the youngest in my family and have never spent much time around children). Since you have taken care of Bethany and Daniel for many years, I’m sure you have much more knowledge of children. I’m intrigued by the fact that different people can have such different perspectives. Recently I talked to a friend who has two younger sisters. She is the oldest, and is very close to the sister who is next youngest. Neither of them is close to the youngest sister. When I asked her why, she said that they had reached out to the youngest sister and tried to include her, but she wasn’t interested. This is particularly interesting to me because I am the youngest of three sisters. In my family, there was the same dynamic – the two older sisters were very close, and I wasn’t close to them. I felt that I was the “odd man out” and that my sisters had each other and weren’t interested in me. After hearing it from my friend’s perspective, I wonder if the way that I related to my sisters could have had more to do with it than I’ve always thought. Maybe because I was the shy, sensitive one in the family (compared to the others, who were more assertive), I withdrew after an initial, probably tentative attempt to reach out. I know for a fact that I later chose to withdraw, but I don’t remember how it originally started.