Alone in Integrated SacTown

While Jamie is visiting his family in PA, this will officially be my first weekend alone in Sactown. With that in mind, I decided to do a little research on the city, and I found out that Sac-Town is merely one of many unfortunate nicknames. Others include Sac-a-cement-o, Sack-a-tomatoes, Sack Toe (my personal favorite), Excremento, Sock Town, Suckramento, Suck Pimento, The Big Tomato, and The River City. I believe that the latter nickname fails in comparison to the others, but this was the order provided by my source of information: daviswiki.org/Sacramento . One would think that Sacramento should be known for the city with the most nicknames; however, the surprising truth is that, according to TIME Magazine, Sacramento is THE most integrated city in the US. The Magazine says,
"of the city's inhabitants, 41% are non-Hispanic white, 15.5% are black, 22% are Hispanic, and 17.5% are Asian/Pacific
Islander. Although many cities are diverse (think New York City or Los Angeles), in Sacramento people seem to live
side by side more successfully."
Upon reading this article, I began thinking about the students in my classes. Although I hadn't really thought about it before, I realized that I teach a very diverse group of individuals. I have students whose primary languages are Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Farsi, American Sign Language and others that I'm not even sure of. It's only been three weeks into the school year and I've already learned the ASL alphabet and began brushing up on my Spanish. (Gracias, Senora Cecchetti...I will always remember three phrases..."No se," "repeata otra vez", and "como se dice ___ en espanol?" as well as my personal favorite, "paro no hay gatos en America, y los calles son de queso!") I smiled when I realized that I get to surround myself with this kind of diversity every single day. Further, what better way is there to learn about various cultures than from children?