Jori Bolton/The Globe and Mail
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Rainbow Day would be our school-wide spirit day, the student council and I agreed. We would assign each class a colour to wear, and then all stand on the hill in a rainbow – a fun photo op to cap the year.
For me, a long-time rainbow fanatic, it was going to be a joy. As a girl, I'd sought rainbows in sunsets, sprinklers, even gasoline puddles. I coloured countless rainbows. I held up my prism to refract and reflect any nearby sunbeam. Now, I'd make a rainbow again – a boost to end a tough year.
A tight group of students had transferred to my Grade 7 class that September, and they were not fitting in. I'd been a painfully shy student myself, so I felt for them. Their identity and dress marked them as different.
Girls who wore the hijab were not new to me, but these four stuck out, particularly a tough girl I'll call Basma, who wore only black. Her parents got her exempted from music on religious grounds, a first for our school. Soon, the three other Muslim girls followed suit.
Yet they were still just kids. Giggling and joking, they would spend lunchtime listening to Justin Bieber.
When Rainbow Day posters went up, one colleague asked me: "Aren't you worried some parents will think it's for Gay Pride and complain?"
Did a rainbow necessarily mean Pride? I wondered. In fact, rainbows have many meanings. In the book of Genesis, the rainbow symbolizes a heavenly promise. In Hinduism, the god Indra shoots arrows of lightning from a rainbow. Leprechauns hide gold at the "end" of them.
Rainbow flags abound, too. Buddhists, Eastern Russian Jews and indigenous groups in the Andes all use variants. The hippies' peace flag from the 1960s may have inspired the inventor of the Pride flag, Gilbert Baker. The six-band rainbow flag we know today represents diversity.
And diversity was what I was after – different backgrounds and ages coming together at school to make a beautiful whole. Surely no parent would think I was trying to sexualize their children.
Indeed, no one objected. When Rainbow Day came, the hallways buzzed. Sets of colour-coded bodies crouched in front of lockers. An outsider might have thought us a cult.
Strangely, my four Muslim girls were wearing black hijabs. They weren't exactly wealthy, so maybe these girls didn't have any purple clothes. Close enough, I thought.
At mid-morning, classes assembled on the sunny hillside. I sent my students to their spot and ran to organize the other classes: red at the top, then orange, yellow, green, blue and purple at the bottom. Happy, jabbering rainbow in place, I descended the hill. I noticed my four black-clad Muslim girls standing off to the side.
"Are they … protesting?" colleagues asked.
No way, I thought. These girls were generally polite and compliant. I told them I wanted them included in the photo. I brought them back to the group, separating them two and two on either side of their classmates.
Then, our teacher-photographer explained that during test shots the four girls had covered their faces with black fabric.
I felt sick. Putting them to the side would get them more attention. Sending them indoors would leave them unsupervised. So I let them stay put. I hoped desperately that they would change their minds and smile along with the whole school.
Later, I saw the photo. They had covered their faces.
That night, I cried with surprising vehemence. Was this adolescent rebellion, or had their parents put them up to it? Was it as homophobic as it appeared?
In the end, the rainbow was Photoshopped free of black figures and hung in the hall. The four girls got a stern lecture from the principal. They mumbled excuses about the wind. Calling their parents seemed pointless.
I sat the girls down in my classroom at lunch days later and explained that my idea of a rainbow included them, too. I said I was hurt that they hadn't come to me with their concerns. Three girls looked down and shifted uncomfortably. Basma smirked. Nonetheless, our talk ended there.
Did I do enough? They'd broken no explicit rule. But our school board believes that no student (or teacher) can be exempted from human-rights lessons.
Every time the girls wore purple clothing afterward (even Basma did), it stung. Upon reflection, I believe the girls' rejection of Rainbow Day released my long-buried feelings as a friendless 10-year-old. Daydreaming about rainbows had blunted the blows of my bullies. These Muslim girls' actions had revealed a chink in my rainbow armour.
The fight against exclusion continues. Twice recently, Grade 7 students came out to staff at our school. Each had severe depression and suicidal thoughts.
A rainbow is a powerful symbol, but can it include everyone? Not easily, but there are paths forward. If we focus on what homophobia and Islamophobia have in common and unify our response, the optimism linked to rainbows won't be misplaced.
Lisa Stuart lives in Toronto.