The least of these

I've been a little fired up lately, so fair warning.  :-)

It's election season here in Georgia.  There's campaign signs on every corner.  And I'm paying more attention this year than I ever had, because the people who are elected will directly affect some of the dearest people to me.  My kids.

No, I'm not talking about the ones I've given birth to (though they will be affected somewhat).  I'm talking about the group that will be coming to me in August.  I'm talking about the 20+ children whose lives will intersect with mine for the next 10 months.  And I'm talking about the kids who will come to school hoping to escape the chaos that they live with everyday.

But, you see, lots of people at the State Capitol don't seem to understand that.  They seem to think that we can perform miracles.  I don't know how many times I've heard one of the legislators say "Our schools need to do more with less."  Really?  See, the problem is the fact that these guys are middle class.  They've come from middle class homes, and they send their kids either to middle class schools or to private schools.  They don't seem to understand that too many times, the schools are the only refuge many of these kids have.   I don't worry about the "brain drain" my students will suffer.  I worry that some of them won't eat very much during summer.  Let me tell you a story to illustrate this.  The teacher next to me last year had a student who I'll call A.  One day, A comes to school about 2 hours late, and when she walked in, she looked awful.  Her teacher asked her what happened, and A tells her that she walked to school because she missed the bus.  (She lives about 5 miles from school.)  Why didn't her mom take her?  Well, her mom wasn't home.  The day before had been her mom's birthday, so she hadn't come home.  A was left with her older sister who sent her off to school with a "nice lady walking by."  What would have happened if the person walking by A's house hadn't been so "nice"?  I wonder about A during the summer.  Is she getting fed?  Is she spending more nights alone?  Is someone making sure her clothes are washed and her room is clean?  Does anyone tell her that they love her, that she is a valuable person, that she can be anything she wants to be?

Where am I going with this?  Well, my conservative friends may not like this too much, but I'm going to be honest.  The Religious Right is the cause of so much of this.  They've listened to too many radio shows telling them that people can lift themselves up by their bootstraps, that helping the poor is enabling them, and that small government is more important than making sure that kids are fed.  They don't care about the kids like A.  Oh sure, they say they do, but whenever it's time to make the hard decisions about making a state budget, they want to cut taxes, cut services, and cut public education.  Who's reaching out to the least of these among us?  Who cares about the kids like A who have no where else to go?  Sure, we can talk about the failure of society, about too many parents having kids out of wedlock, and about parents not taking responsibility for their children, but it seems that all that does is point fingers.  It seems like all conservatives want to do is assign blame, while the kids like A, and others like who walk into our schools everyday need someone to care, they need someone to reach out and love them.  Teachers try.  We give everything we can, but next year, I could have 25-some kids in my room.  While I know that I can teach them all, I worry that I'm going to miss the lost ones.  Am I going to have to time to see when a child is hurting and reach out to them?  Am I going to see the ones that need that extra hug, that extra minute, that extra encouragement?  Is it really worth the extra $20 a year you may save in property taxes?