______________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 © 2011-16 RaceBridges Studio. This lesson plan is part of an initiative for educators called RaceBridges Studio. It is a project that seeks to provide free tools for teachers and students to motivate them to build stronger and more inclusive communities. This transcript may be freely used, reproduced and distributed for educational purposes as long as this copyright information is displayed intact. The transcript included in this unit is copyrighted by Angela Lloyd. Used with permission: www.angelalloyd.com

1966 CARACAS, VENEZUELA: DAY ONE OF

JUNIOR HIGH FOR AN AMERICAN GIRL

By: Storyteller Angela Lloyd

www.angelalloyd.com

Link to YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/4h5SFbwKfl0

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Note : The following is a transcription of a spoken story performance and

may not reflect textbook perfect English. It will guide you as you listen (or read) along.

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Hello, my name is Angela Lloyd and I have a story for you called “The Story We Tell Ourselves.” I grew up in

Caracas, Venezuela and in 1966 I was ready to enter junior high school, which means that I was changing

schools.

I want to tell you a little about the elementary school that I went to; it was called the British School.

Remember, I was in Caracas, Venezuela, donde lomas español, so my friends at school were English, Dutch and

American children and my teachers were from England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales. This means that our math

was done in pounds, shillings and pence not in bolevares, reales, melias. No, it was pounds, shillings and pence

- English money currency. Our history was the British history with kings and queens in England and our

handwriting was very round, up and down, with fountain pens and ink.

Our environment at the British school was very sweet, very safe, very beautiful - a big campus. So it was time to go to junior high and it was a very different change. Maybe that’s happened to you too, eh? I went to an

American junior high school; it was called La Casa Anna.

And I want to tell you about the day that I got dressed to go to my first day of junior high. That morning at

home I had chosen my dress. It was an empire-waist dress with red and white checks on one shoulder, red

and white polka dots on the other shoulder, an empire waist and grey skirt all the way down to the middle of

my calves. Remember the length of my dress, all right, and I had hush puppy shoes and I had white ankle socks.

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I had started wearing braces and I had a pixie haircut. And I also decided to trim my own bangs

that morning so my bangs were very short - shorter than I had anticipated. When I left for school that

morning, I thought I looked really nice. I felt good about how I looked; the bangs were a little short!

I drove in the car with my mom and my brothers and cousin and we got to the campus of the school. It had a

lawn out in the front of the three houses that made up the school. And out on the lawn were all the girls who

were going to be my new classmates and the young men, the boys. The girls, ladies and gentlemen, wore long

black hair with miniskirts - leather miniskirts, boots up over their knees, high heeled black boots, and beautiful

glossy black hair! I looked around the green and I thought, “These girls look like they have jobs! They look like

they work in a bank!”

And I looked down at my dress and my shoes and my white ankle socks and I thought, “How is it I look like

I'm going to kindergarten? My clothes say first grade something! Ay-yi-yi!” I looked around.

This is the story I told myself, “There is no place for me in this place; I do not fit.”

Well, fast forward 30 years. And I was talking with a friend a man named Todd Burley; he's a therapist and he

grew up in Bogota, in Columbia. And I was telling this story to him and he said, “Angela, did you know that on

that morning you were walking into a whole new culture, you were actually entering the culture of where you

had been living for twelve-thirteen years already.”

I had never thought of it that way and he was so right! I was meeting, for the first time, the true culture of the

place where I’d been growing up. And here it was on full display, these beautiful young girls, these young men

who were from that country, from that place, dressed in the way they wanted to be to show who they were.

And it was the same for me. And that's the difference between what was true and the story I told myself. I'm

the one who said, “You don't fit here!” Nobody said that to me. I said it to myself.

So I just want to say that I'm so grateful for being able to have that time at that school because I want you to

know that I did find friends. They were also American girls, also travelers! One was an Army brat; her daddy

was in the Army. Another girl was the daughter of the Canadian ambassador and she had traveled too. We

pulled ourselves close to each other and we wrote a dictionary, a vocabulary. We wrote a code with an

alphabet so we could write to each other and no one would know what we were saying. But we pulled

ourselves close to each other and we made it through just as I imagine lots of people do.

So this is what I know. Everybody who goes to junior high, I think, everyone, is saying we don't belong here;

we don't fit. I think that’s true! I really do and, guess what, you will make it through! I did make it through.

And when I went to high school, I went to an all-girls boarding school where I loved my teachers. I made lots

of friends and I was able to be free and grow into who I am.