Erin Sinner is an English Teacher who is a Minnesotan who recently relocated to North Dakota. She’s very passionate about helping and educating as much people as she can, especially about race and diversity.
“Few moments that has shaped me as a person, one is growing up in a small town”
I grew up in Cold Spring, Minnesota. Which was about 3000 people and a lot of them were Whites. So that influenced quite my experiences from childhood, well into adolescence and then in high school. It limited my experience with a lot of things...so that definitely one thing that influenced myself. You know it's hard growing up in a small town where people have very different outlooks and limited points of view. My parents got divorced when I was a teenager so that have an impact on my life as well and who I became..in positive and negative ways. Positive because my parents are both great people that it just make a lot more sense when they are not married. It’s hard for any child who goes through a divorce with their parents so that was challenging.
“They taught me what it means to be a strong independent female”
My mother’s a very strong willed woman and she’s taught me what that means and what it means to be someone like that, you know? My dad was great too but we buttheads more than anything but my mom you know, even when my parents got divorced, she’s always been very independant and I think that I’ve gained a lot of that from her I would say. My dad is stubborn and my dad is ignorant I love him but, as an English teacher, this is great for me to say...he can afford to read a few books. He’s kinda still stuck in the world that I could’ve been stuck in had I not gone to college and not met people who are not like me. He grew up in that world and never left it so that is one of the reasons why I butt heads with him frequently but he is my father(laughs).
My parents for I love dearly who now I get as a grown woman gets to challenge their way of thinking. Even if I don’t agree with what they say, my parents have always been support of my rights to say whatever I got to say and this helped to shaped who I’ve become. Generally it’s not society’s influence but it helped with how I perceived society and how I make sense of those influences in my life. They taught me what it means to be a strong independent female and someone who is okay to disagree with what the world thinks.
“Minnesota largely is a progressive state which is one of the reasons why I was sad to leave”
Coming from a small town there’s a definite different culture and feel in a small town because everyone knows each other so you almost feel connected in a small community. But I guess Minnesota traditions that I can think of would be Hot Dish. That’s a Minnesota culture example right there. I think that Minnesota largely is a progressive state which is one of the reasons why I was sad to leave. But I think that in a way that breeds its own culture as well so that would be another thing. Now that I live in a different state, Minnesota will always be one of my fondest memories because that’s where I grew up, go to college, create great experiences, and opened my eyes to a lot of different things.
“He loves to stir the pot and loves the voice of change”
He[Her Husband] is now an attorney, he went to law school, he’s an extremely level headed person which is one of the reasons why i’m in love with him. He can look at things at all sides of a perspective and I admire that about him. He’s so calm about it I’m passionate, we balance eachother out in that sense but he makes me-you really think about things which is a very important thing in any relationship, find someone who challenges your way of thinking. He loves the courtroom that’s one of the reason, they job that I talked about that offered in Fargo...It was a great opportunity for him and our family. We[Her Husband] went to the same college but we didn’t meet in college we did the same study abroad program that I talked about the Greece and Italy, it was a joint program, though he went to St. Johns I went to St. Bens and the first time we met and got to know each other was when we were in Greece.
“Studying abroad was one of my favorite experiences as a college student”
Studying abroad was one of my favorite experiences as a college student I recommend that to any college student whatsoever, I mean college is great but you are in your own bubble at the same time you’re in college, you need to get out of that, there’s different cultures around the world and I don’t care where you go, you know I picked Europe, so I did Greece and Italy. I always encourage students to have that experience you know as a college student you get to do it at the cheap side.
I went to Greece because I wanted to branch out to new things, make myself uncomfortable and see what the rest of the world is like. I secretly have a love for history and Greece and Italy made a lot of historical sense to why I picked that program, I mean I believe there was only twenty-some programs available to students and that was one of my top picks, but going to Greece was very different from the rest of Europe it’s not as socioeconomic like as far as their standing is if you’ve been following them this summer and their experience with the Euro, so going to Greece was the first time I have ever been outside the United States, I understood that wow!, in the United States everyone has a washer and dryer and they think that’s the standard but in Greece that’s not the case and people are fine with it. You can wash your clothes and air dry them and it’s not a big deal, things that I never ever thought about in life before, I got to experience it first hand because you know it’s very different reading about them in a book when you experience them
It’s just different. I love Greece it was amazing, Greek people are phenomenal and they will talk you off if you let them. So will Italians but I found more so with Greek.
“That is what influenced me to become a teacher”
Cooper High School teacher Erin Herberg survived a 2003 school shooting at Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minn. She wrote District 281’s superintendent with her story on the day of the recent school shootings at Sandy Hook, Conn. (Photo by Joseph Palmersheim – Sun Newspapers)
When I was in high school, I experienced a high school shooting in Cold Spring, Minnesota 2003(1). I was a sophomore in high school when that happened and that influenced me to become a teacher. It is what show me how important education was because I have such phenomenal educators and teaches that supported me, show me what it meant to have an adult in your life that you can trust and someone that you know loves you and is willing to do anything for you. That is sad and as unfortunate as it was, this is not something you hope your children ever have to experience. But it happened to me and I’m really glad that it did because I’d wouldn’t become a teacher if it wasn’t.
“I love to have conversations about race”
Whenever I talk about white privilege I use them[couple] as an example. She’s white and grew up in the same high school that I did. He is from Kenya and went to school in the United States they fell in love they got married...anyways they have this adorable son. Now I met them this weekend and I love to have conversations with her about race well just because we grew up in the same area and so she told me that just recently at the St. Cloud shopping mall on a Monday you know she’s with her adorable family, her son who is seven months old, and by a complete stranger she got called the N-word lover and this is you know, 2015.
You know it’s interesting one of my best friends is African American and I noticed we’ve kinda done social experiments with his because, you know I love to have conversations about race but if we go to the mall and her and I separate from each other, We were still near each other but we act like we don’t know each other. If she goes into a clothing store people will follow her, store clerks will, and not to ask her if she needs help like “Oh! Can we help you with whatever?” they follow her to see what she’s gonna do and me...nothing...like it’s like i’m not even there and so I noticed things like that.
“A group of small people can change the world”
Muslim teen Ahmed Mohamed creates clock to show teacher and get arrested.
There’s a school in Minnesota right now that is going through a huge issue with the school board member that it was supposed to racially insensitive and it was a religious comments towards Islam. This was the school board member who posted this comments on facebook--- and the amount of support and how the student body of the school has come together to say “Hey, this is not okay.” If we ever did anything like this, we would be held accountable, we would probably be suspended. This is not okay, this is discrimination. It’s ignorance! It’s really bad and these are all different type of students who have come together to support Islamic students and that’s just phenomenal to watch. I think there are other parts of the nation that wouldn’t happened in. Texas for example, when an Islamic student brings a clock to school they think that he is a bomb maker(2). To me that is refreshing to see in Minnesota and things like that influenced me every single day as a teacher to remind me that my students and their hearts are in the right places. A small group of people can change the world, hopefully the school board member will resign.
“I think racism is a product of your environment and a product of how you were raised”
I think racism is a product of your environment and a product of how you were raised. I don’t think racism is taught and so I see it all the time. For example, the school that I am now at is having their homecoming week and you know they have dress up days. I was walking down the hallway and there were four young gentlemen who had the confederate flag draped around their shoulders and I was “Woah! Woah! Woah! Wait, hold on a second here.” I was like how was this gone by as far as it did so I marched myself to the administration office. You know at Cooper(3), they would never atest to this if it never flown through the door. The larger the group of white people you have the more people you have that don’t understand white privilege, which then breeds racism. Not to say that all racist are Whites and vice versa but when we look into history and the news...you know that South Carolina told everyone that you don’t get to do that. Anyway, that was a teachable moment and the student actually was pretty perceptive after I talked to them so that was positive. I found that once you open up your eyes to it, you see it all the time. People who think that racism doesn’t exist because the 1960s happened are greatly mistaken!
“Hopefully I can help people understand the importance of diversity”
I’m gonna be a mom in the next five months so that’s gonna be very different. Bringing a child into the world for the first time will be a whole new experience but i’m also excited because knowing what I know about the world, I can’t wait to -- I don’t want to say push upon but to help my own children understand that so they can go off into the world and do things that I never could so. I see myself in the next five years just continuing with being a teacher continuing to be in a place like North Dakota, hopefully I can help people understand the importance of diversity and you know the importance of embracing other cultures and the multicultural dyna[mic]. My first experience was with the “Hey the Confederate flag is not okay in school, we should probably talk about this.” I’ve been teaching now for four weeks and I just had to remind myself why I’m here and why I want to to this and how important it is for someone like me to do it.
Footnotes
(1) On September 24, 2003 a student shot and killed two other students at Rocori High School, in Cold Springs Minnesota
(2) A muslim teen Ahmed Mohamed from Irving Texas, brings a clock to school and was arrested and accused of being a terrorist
(3) Robbinsdale Cooper High School is a school in New Hope Minnesota that she taught at before moving to North Dakota
Story Facilitators
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