Nine New Zealanders and Two Native Selmians

Nine New Zealanders and two native Selmians arrived in my friend's living room today. The teachers from New Zealand were visiting Selma as part of a civil rights journey and found their way to Cynthia through a happy coincidence involving an article and a mutual friend, Joanne Bland.

Ms. Bland, Lead Journey Specialist for Journeys for the Soul, gives guided tours of churches, museums and other landmarks important to the civil rights movement. Joanne's credibility as a tour guide comes form her direct involvement with the movement--she was 11 when she walked across the bridge on what later became known as "Bloody Sunday."

We talked about our experiences as teachers, and the challenges in our classrooms, governments and cultures. And we agreed that while our environments and backgrounds present specific challenges, the kids are, in essence, the same.

What stood out from our time together was not so much what we discussed, but the feeling of oneness with people from a part of the world so far away that it experiences winter while we experience summer.

Of course we invited them to join us on the Edmund Pettus Bridge for Project Dance, but the logistics are unlikely to work. Maybe they'll dance in their classrooms--surrounded by their students--indigenous Maori and those of European and Asian descent alike.

Whether we dance together on the bridge, or receive video clips from their classrooms, it's just a physical representation of what we know to be true--we are from different backgrounds, but it's all just one big dance.

And how beautiful the dance is when we're in step with one another.