Children of Earth

Hello. My name is Jennifer. I'm a teacher. This is my blog. Contain your enthusiasm.

Many (and by many I mean two) of you reading this are probably wondering why I would choose now to jump on the blog bandwagon...if you weren't wondering maybe you are now. Who knows? That is unimportant. I am blogging now because I have something to say, and I figure now is a good time to say it. So what shall I say?

DISCLAIMER: This is my own personal opinion. Feel free to stop reading at any time. The goal of this post is only to make you think. Not to make you feel that an alien attack is imminent....that will make more sense later. Also, rest easy, I don't teach English. This should make my blatant grammar errors matter slightly less.


There are a lot of things in this world that I like: cheese sticks, the smell of rain, my boyfriend's jokes, when my brothers' randomly burst into song in the middle of Lowe's. Then there are things that I love: God, my family, (most of ) my coworkers, and teaching. I LOVE teaching. I get a kick out of listening to the random stories my students tell and I generally like being around kids. My favorite part of my job is when my students "get" it. Like today when a student asked me to check her work for a project in which the students had to explain to their "long lost aunt" how electricity works (their aunt never having had electricity in her home, she is quite fearful of this new technology). I was very impressed with this young lady's work and commended her way of explaining a difficult concept so easily. She replied: "yeah, I'm used to explaining things to dumb people." I had to chuckle to myself because I know that this girl's definition of a dumb person is one who chooses to live life wallowing in ignorance and seeing no problem with it. I also know that this girl better get used explaining things to dumb people.

So, I love my kids. ALL of them. I love the kid that is so excited that he knows the answers that he is about to fall out of his seat because its leaning so far over as he waves his hand in the air to get my attention. I love the girl who follows me around the room and gives me her list of complaints for the day. I love the boy who forgets his pencil every day and then won't use the one I lend him because pencils smell like work and he might be allergic. I love the boy who works hard every day to find new and inventive ways to do everything but his work. I love the girl who can't seem to get her name on her paper and the one who gets an attitude with me when her grade goes down, even when the grade is low because she is missing three assignments. And yes, I love THAT kid, too...whatever one you were thinking of.

I love these kids. Each one has potential. Teachers see that potential. And we put up with a lot of crap for a chance to see just an ounce of that potential leak out. It's a good thing that I'm willing to get paid in potential. Doesn't seem like I'll get paid in any other form. Before you roll your eyes and think "and now she's going to complain about her salary", be assured I am not. I get by. I knew what I was getting into...but...do these kids know what they're getting into?

I'm a Whovian. If you don't know what that is, well, you aren't really living. Basically, I'm a fan of the show Doctor Who and this brought on a love of one Captain Jack Harkness which led to a netflix binge of Torchwood....and....nobody probably cares about that. Anyway, there was a very short season (or miniseries, really) of Torchwood called "Children of Earth". If you haven't seen it....SPOILERS....basically Earth has a secret alien visitor who has a very secret meeting with Earth's leaders. The goal of the meeting is to keep this alien race from invading. The price to keep said aliens away is to give up some children to the aliens. As the plot thickens, we learn that world leaders have dealt with this alien race before and paid their price. The original price was small (12 children). Now the aliens are back and demanding 10% of all the world's children or they will attack. No one in their right mind would give up their children, right? Wrong. Earth's leaders weigh their options, realize that these beings can and will destroy Earth if their demands aren't met, and ultimately decide to give up the children. This, of course, leads to a debate on which children will be sacrificed. It's quite obvious that none of the leaders are willing to give up their own children or children within their families. The question then becomes how do they select the children? The decision they make is sickening, because it's a decision that hits a little to close to reality: the underprivileged will be offered because it's statistically unlikely that they'd benefit humanity in the future anyway.

The world leaders devise a plan  to take the children without looking like the bad guys. They say they are having the children inoculated and send officials to the schools in poor districts (what we'd call title I schools) to herd the children into buses and take them away. There is this one scene that has stayed with me. It happens when men in uniform come to the schools to get the kids. The teachers know something isn't right and you see a teacher with terror on her face as her students are being led out of her room. She goes up to an officer and demands to know where her children are being taken. She knows something terrible is going to happen, though she doesn't know what, and there is nothing she can do about it. That scene brought tears to my eyes. I am not afraid that my students are going to be whisked away by aliens, but I do feel like they are being taken. Students that belong to a lower socioeconomic status are being taken. These children are often overlooked and, what's worse, we take them for granted, take advantage of them, and don't take their needs into consideration. Society has deemed these children unimportant. They won't amount to much anyway, right? Why invest in them?

Those that write laws and decide funding have no stake in these children. I doubt their children attend the same schools as "those" kids. Doesn't that make it easier to ignore what these children really need? Think about it. Our nation's children are under-served. They belong to a flawed system that is being run by people who not only don't seem to know what they're doing nor care to ask anyone who would have valuable input, but also have no idea what it's like to have obstacles to learning. I'm sure most of their parents were able to read to them, help them with homework, give them a stable environment, etc. And, while I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule, I doubt many of those people went to school on a Monday as children unable to focus because they hadn't eaten since they left school on Friday. How can you determine a child's abilities when they can't focus? You can't. However, it's much easier to give a bunch of kids a test and make generalizations about them when they don't pass. When the economy is in recession, cut funding to schools. Then, if the students don't perform to your "standards", blame the teachers for not doing their job properly and ignore the fact that districts don't have enough funding to pay for enough teachers to run efficiently and/or have programs available that would enhance student learning and bridge the achievement gap. Oh, and when the economy stabilizes, don't put the money back.* Just leave us to figure it out how to teach 40 children in one room, all with different learning styles, some with special needs, and different abilities. It's also fantastic that all of these kids are expected to know the exact same thing when they leave my room, regardless of what they knew coming in.

And we feed the aliens. We talk about "those kids" like they aren't there. We speak of them like they're just one big statistic. We act like that's okay. Parents unknowingly give their children over by saying things like "I didn't do well in school either" or "I always hated math." Saying these things, especially in front of a child, gives the impression that its okay not to try to do any better and gives an excellent excuse to cop out. I'm not blaming parents. It's us as whole. When someone doesn't know something and jokes: "Well, I went to public school, so..." or "You know I went to Blah Blah School" it undermines EVERYTHING that your teacher did and tried to do for you. If you're reading this right now, you learned something. We have got to stop feeding the aliens. We have to stop making excuses for ourselves. If we don't want the Children of Earth taken from us, we have to act. Protect your child from aliens. Read to them. Take them to the library (it's free!). Be involved. View your child's teacher as an advocate not an enemy. Help our children. Become a big brother or a big sister, volunteer with the YWCA, read to your neighbor's kid. It takes a village, right? Let's start being a part of the solution. Make those in charge pay attention to the Children of Earth.

We owe a bright future to ALL of our nation's kids. I love my kids. Do you?

*My state cut funding in 2008 and, despite a rise in economy, has not done anything to fix this. I guess educating a child costs less now than it did then.