Personal Narrative: 9th Grade Drama Class

I first met “T” when I was placed into the same group as him in ninth grade drama class. I believe the teacher was trying to allow for diverse groups, leading to diverse opinions. My school was majority white, farm children, and T was no exception. Our group contained 5 people, including myself and T, and we had to create a script about teenage pregnancy. I always attempt to give everyone I meet a fair first-impression, but T decided to use this first meeting to complain about the groups and the content of the class. The rest of us worked diligently and co-operatively while T continued to either be on him phone or out for a “smoke-break”. T was an obvious sharp contrast next to the rest of the group. I knew about T before I met him officially,

Ideas like having T act as the baby’s father he didn’t agree with because, “he’d look stupid.” Another idea brought to the table was for myself to act as the daughter’s father because we were short on actors. Everyone in the group was okay with me applying a fake mustache for this part, while T rudely interrupted with, “I don’t think you need a fake mustache.” All of his previous critics were only surface scratches, and I remember thinking maybe this is the teacher trying to challenge me and my group-work abilities. I remember an idea of a bi-racial couple having the baby as teenagers was offered by one of our teammates. The idea would’ve been a great challenge to undergo but there was no one in our group, let alone class that was a different race. Before I was able to communicate that appropriately to my fellow group member, T barged in with, “I don’t see any (racist slur) here, do you?” That was the last straw. I was flabbergasted and shocked, I never expected to here that level of hate in my grade nine drama class. My only response to that as a 14-year-old was to ignore him, as did the rest of my group. From that point on, all of us in the group treated him as an