We have a little over a month until school starts back and I’m equal parts excited, sad, and nervous.  I truly love my job and the start of a new year is the best time–all the planning and organizing and decorating–but I’m super sad to be leaving Jase while I go to work.  (Seriously, if schools had daycares for teachers’ kids, it would be awesome.)

This year, for the first time ever, I’m nervous about the start of the school year.  There is so much controversy going on in our world–over race, over gender identity and sexual preferences, over religion.  That controversy is going to be seen and acted out in our children.  The best quote I’ve read lately is from Sarah Bessey.  She says, “So much of how we raise our kids is caught, not taught.”  Even if we don’t speak directly to our children about things, they pick up on our opinions and our biases and our anger and our fear.

There are changes coming to our schools and they aren’t necessarily good ones.

Curriculum has changed in the Virginia school systems to add instruction on gender identity and sexual preferences.  I believe this, like religion, is a subject better taught at home.  I don’t want teachers instructing my children on who they are any more than I want them teaching my children who God is and how we should worship.  As a parent, that’s my job.

Already in Alabama, school systems are having to defend their mascots.  I hate racism, I do.  And as much as I would like to pretend it doesn’t exist in my part of the world, it does.  We need to make changes and speak out against it.  But taking down historical monuments and changing the mascots of schools doesn’t do anything.  We can’t erase history–we have to change our present in order to build a better future.

Join me in praying for our schools, will you?  In our county.  In our state.  In our nation.

Dear Lord, we place our school systems into your capable hands.  Put a hedge of protection around them.  Help our schools not be a place of violence, but one of safety and comfort.

Help our teachers focus less on test scores and the opinions of ‘higher ups’ and more on students and their needs.  Students don’t care about reading or multiplication or history when they are hungry or scared or hurting.

Help our students come to school with attitudes set on loving others and not on hurting others.

God, put up a barrier at our doors to keep all controversy outside and all innocence inside.  Because innocence doesn’t think about gender identity or skin color or poverty. 

Give our teachers the wisdom to deal with students’ needs and issues.  Help us show them love, even in discipline.  Help us be patient, understanding, and calm in every situation.

And if there is an issue with gender identity or racial relations or poverty, help us handle it with care while getting help from someone more qualified.

Give our teachers the words to advise without offending, both to students and parents. But help us to only advise parents when advice is requested.

Above all, protect our children.  Help us remember that the greatest commandment you gave us was to love one another.  

In Your Name we pray, Amen.