As a young school teacher, working in my first (and ultimately only) school district, I had to make an early decision. Should I live in the District or live outside the District? That decision was much more important than I first realized. Teachers who live out of the District can draw distinct \u201clines\u201d in their lives. They have their \u201cwork\u201d, and they have their \u201cpersonal\u201d life. When they go out to dinner, or to the store, or to get gas, they are just \u201canother person\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But if you live in the District, you are \u201con duty\u201d, all the time. I won\u2019t forget that parent who perused my shopping cart at the Cardinals Market (the only place in town) and thought I was too heavy on Oreos and too light on vegetables. Or later, when Kroger\u2019s took over the community food supply; the number of parent conferences I had in the aisle between the beans and the soup. When I wanted to buy beer, I drove out of town. (It\u2019s only fair to say that for the first decade I was in Pataskala, it was a dry town anyway. You couldn\u2019t buy beer or any other alcohol. Later all of that became accessible, but it still took almost twenty years before I bought beer, wine, or booze at the local Kroger). <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So living in the District placed my entire \u201clife\u201d in the community. For a while I wrote a running column and all of the cross country and boys track articles in the local paper. And there was no hiding where I lived, whether I was being kidnapped as a young teacher, or getting toilet papered when I bought \u201cthe\u201d house (only one so far). <\/p>\n\n\n\n By the way, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a wrong or right decision to be made here. Just that new teachers ought to realize that they are making a choice \u2013 not just a career, but about life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I taught high school and middle school, and there were few secrets in our town. This meant that when a kid got in trouble at home, got kicked out and didn\u2019t think they were welcome, or when the family situation got so bad they had to leave \u2013 they\u2019d often knock on my door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are always legal implications when you take a kid in, more now than in the \u201cold days\u201d. The law says you are an adult, and you have the obligation to let the child\u2019s guardian know where they are. So when the kid came through the door, after some time to tell their story and let them decompress \u2013 the phone call home had to be made. It wasn\u2019t a choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But as an adult, sometimes I could intervene to make the situation better. And sometimes intervention was \u2013 hang here. There\u2019s a guest bedroom. There\u2019s breakfast \u2013 and a ride to school in the morning. And there\u2019s time \u2013 time to decompress, time to get away from whatever the issue was at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The easier choice would have been to turn them away.\u00a0\u00a0It would be the safer choice too; no charges of attempting to \u201ckidnap\u201d a child or worse, no threats to get you fired (the great Administrators I worked for stood for me each time \u2013 one-hundred percent.\u00a0\u00a0They had my back).\u00a0\u00a0Turning them away would put it on the kid, and his parents or guardians \u2013 not me.\u00a0\u00a0But the answer to that is simple:\u00a0\u00a0it wouldn\u2019t be right.\u00a0\u00a0I made a choice, to teach in, and live in, this community.\u00a0That choice determined what my role would be.\u00a0\u00a0And sometimes that meant taking care of a kid who had nowhere to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So why all of this reminiscing about life in Pataskala? Because what\u2019s the difference between what I did in Pataskala, and what we, the United States of America, are doing on the Southern border? There are unaccompanied minors, pre-teen and teenagers; journeying a thousand miles to get there. They are running from gangs, murder, rape, and blackmail. And during the journey, who knows what \u201cadvantages\u201d were taken. Then they are \u201ccoyoted\u201d across the border, and sent into the hands of the US Border Patrol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the past couple of years, those kids were loaded on buses and sent back, some to the border towns in Mexico, and some back to the homes they were trying to escape. They came on a journey to find protection in the United States. Instead, we turned our backs on them and sent them back to the Hell they were escaping. It would be like me slamming the door in the face of the kid whose family was dissolving around them. It was wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So now we are taking those kids in, taking \u201ccustody\u201d of them at the border, and moving to secure and protect them.\u00a0\u00a0It isn\u2019t easy, and it isn\u2019t cheap.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s especially messy at the border itself, when the sheer number of \u201cunaccompanied minors\u201d, kids, are overwhelming the process.\u00a0\u00a0But we are taking them in, not rejecting them back to the risks they took to get here, or worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we aren\u2019t just \u201chousing\u201d them. Many have contacts here in the US, family members, some legal and some not. We are finding ways to move those kids out of \u201cUS Custody\u201d and into the protection of their own relatives. And for the ones with no relatives, we are working to find ways take care of them, and then move them into foster situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just like here in Pataskala, there\u2019s a right and a wrong thing to do. It would be easier if the US simply denied all the \u201cunaccompanied minors\u201d, and sent them away like the Trump Administration. But easier isn\u2019t right. And taking care of these kids is more important than doing what\u2019s easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s doing what\u2019s right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Knock on the Door<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s Right for Pataskala<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s Right for America<\/h3>\n\n\n\n