BOSTICK REPORT-It's heart breaking to see kids flounder in a classroom after their moms and dads have been deported. Working as a teacher, I've witnessed more stars fade in the eyes of children suffering a life of isolation from their parents than I care to recall now.
The fact is that when you’re a kid, your home is wherever your mom is and when your mom has been taken out of the country and deposited somewhere else, your heart yearns for reconciliation. What's frustrating for me is that even as I write this now I can hear the echoes of the GOP saying something to the effect of "fine, send those kids with their moms and let's fix our country".
What Republicans don’t get – I guess – is that it isn’t as simple as going to live with your mom. The kids I’ve had in my classrooms are stuck here in this weird state of purgatory. Either their parents got deported and left the kids here to pursue better opportunities or the parents don’t have the capacity to bring the kids with them or the parents intend to come back, secretly or otherwise, or the kid was born here so this IS their home, or whatever… it doesn’t really matter what the reason is. The kids are here. The kids are staying here. But, their hearts are elsewhere and wherever you put your heart is where you efforts go.
Our problem in education is that while these kids pursue this spiritual odyssey of the heart, they’re still here and life moves on before mending those broken hearts. Those kids are stuck in classrooms- languishing in a mix of sadness, rage, and confusion.
And the years tick on and on in this listless state of learned helplessness. It's not as noticeable in elementary school, but once they get to me - years later and countless educational opportunities rejected, those heartbroken little kids have done the only logical thing they can to survive their loss. They’ve hardened their hearts and accepted their status as prisoners in a country that rejected their family, but trapped them here to suffer.
That’s why immigration reform has to happen. Because those kids aren’t going anywhere, yet they’re not invested in their life here and there are serious repercussions from this quagmire. Those kids can’t simultaneously live life fully here while their heart aches for mom and dad, yet we demand that they do and that causes friction.
Once we create immigration policies that are based on the reality that those kids are not going anywhere no matter what we do or don’t do, then we might stop breaking up families and undermining the home-life of our students. THEN those kids can start building their lives here wholeheartedly.
Once we stop “solving” our problem with bad immigration policies of deportation and begin embracing the people who have invested their lives in our country – legally or illegally – then we will move forward in unity towards stronger communities, healthier economies, and brighter futures as a nation.
What’s the risk we face if we don’t act on sensible immigration reform? What price will we pay if we continue ignoring the reality of millions of kids languishing in our classrooms while we arrest and deport their parents? What result do we work towards if all we do is build a wall between our country and “theirs”?
We entrap millions of students who hate our schools, so they do the only thing an unreasonable child who has no concept how bad their lives will be if they refuse to learn and that is to act out.
Again, I can hear Republicans responding. What’s the problem with that? Send the kid to the office. Punish that kid. Suspend that kid. Teach them to behave.
Well, kids who have lost their parents aren’t that simple. You see, they hijack the lesson every day to seek out some emotional relationship with the only consistent adult they have in their lives and that is me, their teacher. Frequently, the quickest way to get my attention is to act out because being punished by teachers and principals is a simple, consistent relationship kids can continue year after year. And it feels like parenting, only the worse form.
So day after day, 10-12 kids in every class I teach will do that in some form or another, to some varying degree. They’ve done this for years by the time I get them and their academics have languished.
The kids in my classroom read, on average, at a level that is 3-4 years behind grade level. How well do you think they analyze Shakespeare when they struggle to get through Charlotte’s Web? If these kids never mastered basic multiplication, how much algebra do you think they do?
What’s wrong with that? Your kids are in that classroom, too. And that’s what makes this a major problem for everyone, even the heartless ones who can’t see immigrants for their humanity.
America’s rise to prominence was built off of a strong public education system. To continue that, we need to stop deporting our students’ parents. Fix immigration now or the legions of 5 and 6 year old kids growing up without their hearts will destroy our public schools. And who could blame them?
(Odysseus Bostick is a Los Angeles teacher and former candidate for Los Angeles Councilman. He writes The Bostick Report for CityWatch.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 101
Pub: Dec 17, 2013