HEATHER
MIGDON
Diary #9
A
War Diary
I spent part of the afternoon on Friday sitting with my homeroom students in our classroom during one of our shelter-in-place drills. All of the lights were out, the shades were drawn, and the windows and doors were locked. Being prepared is supposed to calm our nerves, but I found that hard to believe when looking at the anxious expressions on my students' faces during our drills.
I do not know what bothered them more – imagining a circumstance when such a drill would be necessary, or the knowledge that if Washington, D.C. suffered some sort of terrorist attack, a locked door and drawn shades would fail to offer much of a defense. Among the students I teach, as well as within the community in which our school is located, there is almost unanimous opposition to the war. My students wrote in their journals and said aloud in class that they hated President Bush for "getting us into war," and many added that they did not care whether we "won" or "lost" the war with Iraq. Because my kids (and perhaps middle grades students in general) are naturally opinionated, there were no shortage of raised hands during our several class discussions about national security and war. Despite the healthy discourse going on among my students, I could not help but notice that the quietest two students were the ones who had close family members in the military. Charlese's brother is in New Jersey awaiting deployment, and Jemia's brother is already in Kuwait. Both were silent during all of our discussions. I know that both girls are concerned deeply about their brothers. One even broke down crying in class several weeks ago because she was so worried about her brother getting killed. But I also sensed that they might have been interpreting their classmates' anger at the war as anger against the soldiers. Indeed, with so many people in our school's community opposed to the war, is it possible that they have trouble seeing the merit in their brothers' fighting for this cause? Having never had family in the military, I did not initially worry about what Charlese and Jemia were feeling. Also, being opposed to the war myself, I was not troubled by my students' collective condemnation of the war efforts. However, placing aside my personal political beliefs, I realized that if I had family risking their life for something, I would want to believe that it was something worth dying for. At the encouragement of several teachers, the secretary read a prepared statement the next morning saying that all students with family in the military should be extremely proud of the courage and loyalty of their relatives fighting or preparing to fight in the war. I don't know for sure if the statement made any difference to my students, but I'm anxious for the day when Jemia and Charlese decide to speak up and express some of their own feelings surrounding the war. Their silence should not be ignored.
