Freedom and Illegals.

The New Colossus

Emma Lazarus

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Last May, on one of the few warm, warm days, one of my students shared their birthday celebration with the class by bringing popsicles. I usually seat myself on an outside bench, invite the kids to line up, and pass to them the treats. For some reason - heat, heatstroke, weariness from two solid weeks of state core testing - I couldn't tell you then and I sure don't know now, the students bunched in groups around me. They weren't particularly noisy or pushy. Just a bunch of 4th graders excited and anticipatory about being given a cherry,or a banana, an orange, or a root beer flavored frozen ice on a stick. In the beginning, with the first wave of huddled, sweaty bodies, I invited them to form a line. Some students attempted a line formation but then the other 25 students bunched up again and the try to form a line students were pushed out. I extended the invite one more time - and, please keep in mind - these were not loud nor obnoxious 9 and 10 year olds. My brain clicked finally that a line was not going to happen - too many kids too set on creating a circle. 

Freedom and illegals - they want our freedoms, the goods resulting from our freedoms - our clean water, our flushing toilets, our dump yards, our housing, our clothes, our food, our jobs, our standard of medical care, our educational opportunities. Forming a line isn't part of their plan. They are of the circle mind. Recognizing this, my commitment is to teach and to have high expectations for this generation of students to do better, to be better. I  must be a lamp lighting their pathways while helping to raise their moral, ethical, educational, and spiritual standards that they may model decency and democratic service for the next and the next and the next generations. 

For a plethora of political and moral reasons, their circle will not be broken.