One of the reason I love teaching in Myanmar at an international school is because in one small way, I feel like I can make a difference as they try to make changes in their country's government. The students we teach will probably go abroad to a university and then return to help build a nation. That is the hope anyway.  Here is an example of what teaching a student to think on their own and not just memorize facts can produce. Unfortunately for me, I never had the privilege of teaching this young lady and I will have to admit, when she asked me to help her edit, there was not much I saw that needed to be changed.  Hats of to you Zooy! The world need more who can reflect and correct.  Thank you for your inspiring words.  A university would be crazy not to snatch you up!

She made up her own prompt (it was a supplement to a private school application).

If you don't know what's happening in Myanmar, here is a brief article. Make sure to read the comments also. http://news.yahoo.com/us-warns-myanmar-over-growing-religious-tensions-110015152.html

US, UN warn Myanmar over growing religious tensions

Prompt: What does the fox say?

             When I was young, the Muslims were always coming to get me. Cry too long and the Muslims would eat me. Stay up too late and the Muslims would burn me.

            I didn't realize I was raised to be a racist until I was much older. Looking back, the scare stories my parents told me were not overtly or even remotely racist compared to those of our next-door neighbors. In fact, this is a countrywide racial prejudice.

            Years ago, I had a bizarre experience with racism. Every weekend, I teach at a monastery with my friends. Around the time that the Burmese-Rohingya conflict first started, we had an influx of escapees from conflict zones.

            One of the new kids said, “I would kill the Rohingya and burn them, so I can make sure they are really dead.”

            The weirdest thing was, I understood him. I knew this seven-year-old had seen more death than I have, and that his pain stemmed reasonably from his experiences. His stories deeply resonated the scare stories of my childhood. He had lost his whole family, and he might never go back home, and to him, it was all because of the Rohingya.

            As a friend, I empathized with him. But as a teacher, I could not side with him. The following week, I took my students on a field trip to visit disabled persons and sick patients at a nearby hospital. We spent the day drawing cards, playing with the disabled kids, and laughing with stage three cancer patients. Only when we were about to leave did I tell my students that the people we met had a different religion, that they were Rohingya.

            As much as I would like to romanticize the idea that I was a young teacher who managed to influence everyone’s beliefs, I can’t. The next day, no one showed up to my class except one kid—a shy girl named Asha.

            I asked where everyone is and she shook her head. I nodded and told my friends to go back home. I stayed behind with Asha, with her staring at the floor while I nervously walked back and forth.  

            “Thank you for what you did yesterday. It was nice.”

            “If anything, I only made it worse.”

            “No. Something changed.”

            They always talk about how change only needs one person. Did I really do it?

            “What did?”

            “The boys. They don’t talk so much about killing anymore.”

            Most people think the root problem of racism is other people. It’s not. It’s us. It does not start from other people unless we let it. And the way we let it is by believing what the nearest person says and by waiting around for a different truth to come to us. The truth isn’t spoon-fed, so if we seek the truth, we must go look for it. My sole intention was to show my students that the truth, the Rohingya side of the story, is there if they were willing to tear down the wall they built with other people’s fears.

            The fox does not need to be given a voice. The fox is actually really loud. But foxes are always small in number, and it is both your duty and mine to silence the majority, and listen to the voices of the minority that we have drowned out incessantly.

            I told Asha that the boys not showing up would not stop me from telling them that they’re wrong. Even if it takes me years to fully convince them that the Rohingya are people too, I am willing to do so, because I can’t think of a better way to go insane.