It’s Sunday afternoon; I’m preparing lesson plans for the coming week. It’s hard to focus after Thanksgiving break. My phone buzzes, alerting me to a text.
“Teachers, if you are unable to attend work tomorrow due to the SY border crossing closure, please inform your supervisor ASAP.”
I turn on the news, and am horrified. While Honduran migrants from the Central American caravan rush the border, law enforcement officials respond with rubber bullets and tear gas. Reports of migrants throwing rocks, and toddlers choking in clouds of tear gas dominate the news feed. The U.S-Mexico border is closed indefinitely.
My thoughts run to my students. Many of them live cross-border lives, and this will affect, minimally, their ability to get to school. I wonder how to have the discussion I’ve been avoiding since the troops arrived at the border.
The first day we see the troops, I’m on the soccer field watching my students run laps. I stamp their hands as they run by, cheer them on, bark out a few commands to hustle.
I notice a knot of children stopped by the fence a hundred yards away. The size of the group and the volume of the chatter grab my attention. I can’t tell if I’m looking at the precursor to a fight or an exchange of finger skateboards. I head over to break up the group.
I turn my gaze to follow their pointing fingers. On the freeway off-ramp that runs behind the field, a convoy of military vehicles rumbles past. “Soldados!” I hear a boy shout. “I want to be one when I grow up!”
Many of the boys are excited by the muscular vehicles. A few soldiers wave, and the boys wriggle with excitement. Although San Diego has a large military presence, it’s rare to see in our tiny corner. Military families are few in my school.
Students attuned to the news quickly connect the presence of the troops to the caravan of Central American immigrants making its way to the border, and debate begins.
“We should just let them in,” Manny insists. “They’re really poor. They need help.”
“Like my grandma,” Melissa adds. “She came to the US because she was really poor.”
“Yeah, but they’re hondureños,” Danny answers. “That’s different.”
Most of them, I suspect, are parroting what they have heard at home. I’m often unsure whether to intervene, interject, or correct, and today is no exception. We watch the convoy rattle south, and then we head inside to tackle graphing.
By recess, helicopters circle overhead, heavy as a threat. I watch the sky with caution; sometimes helicopters are a prelude to a lockdown, and the logistics of rapidly herding 250 preteens up the staircase and indoors are daunting. Smoke from fires on the Tijuana hillsides are visible from the schoolyard, adding to the general feeling of chaos and menace. Despite the tension, recess ends with no mishaps other than the usual scraped knees and petty squabbles.
After a few days, we become immune. Only a few enthusiastic students wave at the soldiers, and I’ve stopped watching the helicopters during recess time. It appears that despite the fever pitch of the news, the hype about the caravan seems to have exceeded the reality.
At the end of the week, we break for Thanksgiving, more worried about turkey than safety.
Monday dawns differently. Student chatter is at a fever pitch.
“Teacher, did you see the news about the hondureños?”
“They better not try to get in here! I’ll chase them out with a stick!”
“I’ll throw my backpack at them!”
I listen as the children of immigrants, some recent immigrants themselves, some who surreptitiously live in Tijuana and cross the border to come to school each morning, decry the migrant caravan. They see the immigrants as invaders, people of danger. They don’t realize that many people view them through the same lens: opportunists, usurpers of resources, dangerous.
I struggle for words. The combination of politics and students is potentially explosive, and, it’s hard to stick to facts when I have so many feelings. Finally, I still the most aggressive speakers, placing a hand on the shoulder of the loudest ones.
“Anyone who comes into this classroom is welcome. It doesn’t matter where they came from, or how they got here. In Room 30, we’re what?”
“Family until June,” they mutter in unison.
That’s all I’ve got: the ability to convince 10 year olds to accept whoever comes into our circle, the constant reminder to be kind. It’s certainly not immigration policy, and it doesn’t address the desperate level of need mere miles away across the border. I hold onto the dream of teaching kindness, acceptance, and generosity, in the hope that the children watching us today will grow up to shape policy that reflects this.
