“This Is Not My Home.”

The van pulls into the parking lot of the group home and the cries from the three-year-old in the back seat drown out the voices of the other children. As she kicks her legs and pounds her fists, her incessant cries of “this is NOT my home” silence everyone around her.

In the way only a young child sometimes can, she has put into words what all the other kids in the van are feeling, but rarely express in words themselves.

This is not their home.

This is only the place they have ended up, through no fault of their own.

This is the place they have ended up because their brother is in jail, or their father sexually abused them, or their mother died in a car accident yesterday, their grandfather abused them, and there is nowhere else for them to go.

When it comes to issues of educational and social justice, sometimes all the rhetoric, research, public policy, and history fall short in the face of the stark reality and the pain of a three-year-old who knows that she is not going home.

Most of us will never know what it is like to be three years old, wanting our mother and knowing that although we don’t know where she is, she won’t be there to answer our cries.

Most of us will never know her pain.

And this is why I believe we cannot talk about educational and social justice without listening to the voices and telling the stories of the most marginalized in our society – the ones who, most of the time, do not have a say in issues that affect their lives deeply.

We need to listen to their cries, honor their stories, protect their lives.

And we need to create avenues of hope.

Everyone deserves a chance to dream.

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