But there doesn't seem to be anyone around

[Brand New Day, Forty Foot Echo]

Go read this:

Officials: Second-grader sexually assaulted by 12 boys

How do first and second graders even know how to do these things?

One of my TF*A friends had a little boy that came in with anatomically correct female breasts drawn on his arm, his own "artwork"- she teaches first grade.

She also intercepted a note (I may have mentioned this before) written from one of her boys to his kindergarten girlfriend:

Dear ________,
I love you baby.
We is gonna have sex.
I like your backpack.

Things like this make me really wonder what I'll choose to do when my kids are school age. I usually lean toward public education for a plethora of reasons. For one, it's an excellent mission field. Secondly, I don't want my children to lack vital social skills that you oft see in students that have been homeschooled. Also, though I fully intend to raise godly offspring, there's a level at which you need to be able to walk with those who don't know Christ in order to share Him with those people. That's why I teach in the public sector, as opposed to a private Christian school.

I am not a proponent of a private Christian school unless I fully believe that 1) the Truth is taught according to God's Word and 2) that on all levels- students to staff- people honestly seek to know and pursue Christ. There's a school at home called Northwest Christian and this year at the state basketball tournament people on some message boards were saying that the students from NWC were cursing more and behaved far worse than the fans and students from the non-Christian schools. I know Christians are human, and not perfect, but I also won't knowingly send my kids to a school filled with hypocrisy on those levels. It's a personal choice on my part, but I'd rather have my children in school with those who don't know Christ as opposed to those who act like the world but attach Jesus' name to it.

I do have to note here that a lot of this depends on my kids. I don't use the "Well, I went to public school and I'm fine" argument because I'm me, and I don't expect my children someday- or anyone else- to be just like me. But stories like the one from the article above make me... unsettled, to say the least.

Another thing: today I intercepted a note. A lot of my girls write notes all the time- I understand because I totally did, too. That said, I don't let them get away with it. This one I decided to read because it's a student that I sometimes worry about. Here are some excerpts:

*"... this might sound stupid but I wanna have a baby and yes I wanna have it now after I get my car and everything but I really wanna baby... I want someone to love me for me and someone to give me a reason to stay out of trouble."

*"I just don't know what to do anymore. I feel like no one loves me. Sometimes I hate everything about me. Everything. It's like no one wants to be around me like they used to."

She then compared herself to someone that she does think people want to be around and said she feels ugly compared to that girl. What's sad is this girl is gorgeous- and I am not just biased. She's absolutely beautiful. Girls starve themselves to have a figure like hers, and she has a soft yet striking face. And, though it makes me sick, she's what my black students call "light skinned", meaning she's black but with lighter skin. Apparently "light skinned" is highly preferable to "dark skinned"- calling someone "dark skinned" is an insult. Interestingly enough, only the black students use these terms- no white student would dare point out differences in skin tones of the black students.

It absolutely breaks my heart- this is a freshman in high school willing to admit to a friend that she's desperate for unconditional love and that the only place she expects to find it is having a baby. I am going to talk to her tomorrow. She needs to understand that no baby will ever help her love herself- and she needs that first. People cannot fulfill her. If you think to, pray for this student. Her name (again, not her actual name, but the Lord knows) is Kenzi.

I am not sure how this got so long. It's sort of heavy stuff. But I think about things like this often- education, school, my students- so it's not abnormal for all of these things to swirl around in my head.