Scanning the radio dial on the drive home from work today, I
paused on NPR’s All Things Considered
just in time to hear one of the young men I got to know years ago when I was an
adult volunteer in a youth organization. He had graduated high school, served
in the Marine Corps, fought and was wounded in Afghanistan, and then went to
college and did a stint in AmeriCorps. He now teaches at the school where I did
my student teaching last year, and it was nice to run into him in the halls or
talk with him during teacher inservice days. Although the view he expressed on
arming teachers to defend students is different from (though not counter to) my
own, I was proud of him for what he said. We would each fight for and protect
our students in our own way—out of duty but mostly out of love.
A few weeks ago, one of my students asked, “How many kids
did you say you have, Mrs. Bader?” I answered, “104: I count all of you as my
kids, too.” They probably don’t realize how true that is. I brag about them,
laugh with my husband over the funny things they say, and pray for them each
day. And I worry about them even though I am not typically a worrier.
I worry because I know the things that many of them are
going through and because I know there are many more things I don’t know about.
I may worry more about them than my own kids because I know their lives less,
have less say, less time with them. I worry about the choices they will make
for their lives after they leave my classroom and our school: for the day, for
the year, for good.
Some of the choices my students will make society condemns
and recognizes as dangerous. Some of those choices, on the other hand, are
encouraged, condoned, commended; yet these choices will lead them in the path
of danger, too. I do not know what the best path is for each of my students any
more than I knew what was best for my own children, nor are these my choices to
make, so I do what I can.
I ask my students hard questions. I try to get them to ask
their own questions, defend their answers, and think deeply about the choices
they are making now and will make in the future. I pray that God will guide
them and protect them. Even so, as with my own children before them, some of
the things these kids—my kids—want scare the hell out of me.
So, it’s comforting to hear that familiar voice on the radio
breaking through my thoughts, hopes, and fears--to see one of the kids I worked
with, as I have seen my own: grown, happy, brought safely home again from
dangerous and scary choices, doing good and making a difference in the world.
For Caleb and Joshua and for Joseph, Joe, and we'll just call him Joe, too
