Support our Troops

At 8:45 this morning I watched a video called Invisible Children with my students. The video shared some information about the children who are victims of the 17 year long civil war in Sudan. It tells their story of abduction, rape, and a life of innocence taken from them. Most of the children are orphans. All of the children fear the LRA (Lords Resistance Army) and what will become of them once they are taken from the destitute lives they live under in the basements of flooded hospitals or in the high brush of the forest. These children's games of hide-and-seek have a lot more at stake than any game I have ever played. They aspire to be doctors, lawyers, and teachers. They know they never will be. They fear being murderers; slashing innocent people with machetes for a thrill that they are brainwashed into thriving off of.
It wasn't the most uplifting way to start a morning, but it was a very effective tool to educate those of us who needed to know more (which, in my opinion, is all of us).

Then we moved to two silly seminars and I read The Picture of Dorian Gray while my students yawned through lectures.

The day ended with a welcome home for a teacher who was in the Army Reserves and just returned from Iraq. Picture a high school gym full of students singing Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American." Wacky! I do not support this war. No part of me, not one little fiber in my bleeding heart supports this President's agenda which has taken so many innocent lives. However, I do support our troops. I know that is hard for many right-wings to believe: that one could support living people fighting for an unknown cause, while still completely 100% disagreeing with the purpose. It was hard for me. I am also against recruitment within schools. These children who are told that the Armed Forces are their only hope at a "successful" life don't even know what an IED is. Well, that is, until one of their legs is blown off by one. It is trickery at it's best. Government funded deception. I will most definitely inform my students about the Conscientious Objector status. Anyway, it was a very strange experience to see 300 children welcoming home a teacher, who some of them didn't even know, and singing praises of our country in unison. The war was not glorified or misrepresented. The children were not mislead into believing that this particular teacher's path was the right path or the only path. I respect that.
It was an experience that I needed. I needed to make the division between our troops and Mr. Bush's war. I needed to put that into practice internally.

I did my very favorite thing in the world today: learned.