Hopelessness into hope...kinda

A few months ago one of my students just up and moved to Florida to live with his mom. His dad didn't tell us, he just left, we don't know what school he's at or how to contact him or anything. When he moved I was really upset because he was a kid I checked on all the time to make sure he was ok. If he didn't show up to school, we'd call or go to his house. If he didn't eat breakfast, I had food for him. His dad drinks a lot and his two brothers are crazy messed up. Anyway, when he came to school I knew he was at least alive, got two meals a day, and had some clothes to wear. When he moved it brought up this doubt again that God can be trusted with my students. I see so much pain in their lives and wonder often how He can let that happen to them. Without being able to see J every day I lacked trust that God would provide for him and put people who care for him in his life.

Well, this morning my principal came into my room and took me outside in the hallway. She told me that his older brother had been accused of capital murder and was on trial that day. He is 15 years old, and was the person that my student was at home with because his dad was always gone and his other brother was in jail. Apparently this brother killed another teenager and after the kid was dead took the money from his pockets. And it's all on camera so there's no way he will get off. As horrified as I am, at least my little student isn't here to witness all of this. It makes me sick to even think about it--but imagine trying to deal with that if you were an eleven year old and your parents were completely absent from your life and you brother, who you really love in spite of his craziness, killed someone and is being shipped off to prison, probably for life, at 15.

So my little J, wherever you happen to be--I'm glad you're there and not here even though I can't check up on you.

It All Depends On How You Look At It

It All Depends on How You Look At It

I.


Terezín is full on beauty.
It's in your eyes now clear
And through the street the tramp
Of many marching feet I hear.

In the ghetto at Terezín,
It looks that way to me,
Is a square kilometer of earth
Cut off from the world that's free.

II.

Death, after all, claims everyone,
You find it everywhere.
It catches up with even those
Who wear their noses in the air.

The whole, wide world is ruled
With a certain justice, so
That helps perhaps to sweet
The poor man's pain and woe.

-Miraslav Kosek, 10

Died, age 12, in a concentration camp.

Reflections on standardized testing and holocaust

This morning I sat down at my desk in my classroom before any kids got there and I looked over at my bulletin board that has a note pinned to it. It says "The way we honor the children of the Holocaust is to not repeat the world that they had." which is a quote from a 5th grader I think I've shared before. Last week I read my students an article about how classrooms are becoming standardized test prep centers and when I finished the article I asked the kids if that was how they felt. All of them immediately answered "yes!"

So today, after reading that note and realizing how my students were feeling, we had a little chat. I asked them how the Holocaust happened, and they talked about how people weren't educated, how they ignorantly followed Hitler because they were in a depression, etc. and so then I asked them how we kept something like that from happening again. Our discussion led to understanding how to decide what is true and what is false by researching it. The beauty of the conversation was that we were able to give a purpose to learning to read and understand what we read that went beyond passing a test at the end of the year.

I hope that someday my students will grow in to people who WANT to learn...I hope.