When we were taking our firstborn son home from the hospital, no one gave us any instruction book on how to take care of this little guy. There was a manila envelope stuffed full of pamphlets on SIDS, shaken-baby syndrome, and how to install a car seat.

There wasn’t anything on how to actually care for this new human being. What do we do when he is crying all night? What happens if he doesn’t want to eat? How do I handle his temper tantrum? Help!!!

There is an African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,” which has been used many times in our American culture. As a teacher, I believe this wholeheartedly.

Every year, I have all students from 5th grade to 8th grade sit in my classroom for nine weeks. During those weeks I allot one week totally to how to be a good digital citizen. My students have never had a life without the Internet, Facebook, or Google so it is imperative that I teach them how to use it safely and kindly.

This past week our community was rocked to its core with the posting of a video of a very violent fight between three high school girls and several other students videoing the fight and not helping to get the fight stopped.

It went viral very fast. Almost immediately the conversation in social networks switched from getting help for these students to who can we blame, how can we punish these students. These were “my kids” sitting in my classroom less than a year ago. It broke my heart to see this spiraling out of control.

It is very easy as adults with our life experiences to place blame on situations like this. It must be the parents, schools, teachers, police, …to let something like this happen.

So what do we do as a community, as a “village” if you will? I thought I was doing my part teaching my students that if you are in a conflict with someone, you do it with kindness and walk away. I thought that I was teaching them that if you record a fighting video and post it online, that it was cyberbullying. Ultimately, the choice, in the end, was the students who were involved.

We can’t force our children to make good choices every time, every day. They are human just like us and will make bad choices in their lives. All we can do as a community as our “village” is to educate our children the best we can, hope we’ve done our part, and allow them to make mistakes and learn from them.

What is your definition of the proverb, “It takes a village?” How do we as a society help our children navigate this crazy world? Please comment and share.