Teaching Diversity in the Utah Bubble

Life Experiences That Led Me To Be A Social Justice Educator

I grew up in a small farming community in Northwest Ohio. The town’s population was approximately 9,300 people in the year I graduated high school, and the primary economy of the town was manufacturing. Many of my classmates’ parents worked in local industry, farmed, or owned a small business. The town was 93% White, with Hispanic/Latinx being the largest minority population at 6%. The median income for families was approximately $45,000, and almost 19% of families were living below the poverty line. I would categorize the town as being primarily working class or lower-middle class. There were few students in my school that would have been categorized as wealthy, and those whose families were more well-off than average had parents with careers like teachers, city employees, and managers or owners of the manufacturing plants in the area.