Good God!

Often, I forget just how religious the community I teach in is. Since my kids regularly lie, curse, steal, vandalize, cheat, and do drugs, it's pretty easy for me to forget what "moral" people they are. From time to time I am reminded, however, when the same students who are suspended nearly every other week will begin spouting their bible-thumping views when the subject of religion arises. Apparently, you're still heaven-bound if you beat the crap out of someone, as long as you have Jesus in your heart.

At the beginning of this semester, my first journal prompt for my students was simple: "What do you care about?" Since most of my students were failing and refused to do schoolwork, I figured it might help to learn what they were passionate about and what their priorities were so that I could find some aspects about them in order to respect them as people. Alas, 80% of the responses referenced that they cared about God, with the majority of them listing that as their #1 thing in life, so the whole exercise just served to alienate me further. "You love God?" I'd find myself asking aloud when I read them. "You deal drugs and curse me out when I ask you to be quiet, but you go to church every week?" I swear, it drives me batty.

During a poetry presentation last month, one student correctly picked out the metaphor of the ocean being God's hand rocking a boat. While explaining this part, ey prefaced eir comment with, "Sorry to any atheists."

"You're apologizing to atheists?!" another student shouted out. "I'm sorry to atheists, too - sorry they're going to hell!" Uniformly, the class erupted in cheers and applause, followed by a loud, "Fuck atheists!" It took us a good three minutes to get back on track and let the presentation continue. My students -- such good little Christians.