My students arrived back after a three day weekend, so I asked a few students if they had a good weekend. Most nodded with joy. Some did a canned, "Yeah," and I knew that it wasn't so great for them being shuttled back to their families. One was super excited and told me, "I finally got to see my dad. He's at a halfway house."
"That's wonderful!" I thought fondly of my former foster student whose mom was in a halfway house while getting straight from her drug addiction. He once told me that he had to do a DNA swab to determine who his dad was. Fortunately, for my former student, his dad was a good provider.
Then my current student added, "I haven't seen him for over 10 years!"
"Why?"
"He's been in jail for 10-1/2 years."
"Oh," I said in shock that I tried to mask.
"My brothers are in jail for life. One of my brothers killed a couple people and my other brother wouldn't identify him, so they sent him to jail, too. They're my half brothers. My dad had a lot of women."
Another student remarked, "My brother's in jail for life for killing a couple people, too."
Though it was quite a bonding moment for my students, I was indeed shocked!!! The reality of the students' psyches being held in line by laws and not their conscience started to sink in. God has certainly placed an enormous responsibility on me. What a task! To try to instill a love for life in kids that have had it cheapened.
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